As the NFL and Paramount Skydance actively hammer out a new media rights agreement, it seems the league is happy to deepen its partnership with one part of the company.
The NFL and Skydance Sports, the film studio which is now part of the greater Paramount ecosystem after David Ellison’s Skydance purchased Paramount last summer, will broaden its partnership with the formation of a “premier content studio” focused on scripted, football-adjacent films, according to Sam Farmer in the Los Angeles Times.
News of the partnership is particularly notable as the NFL and Paramount actively negotiate a new broadcast deal thanks to the change-of-control clause triggered by Skydance’s purchase of Paramount last summer. The Paramount deal is the first of several new rights deals the NFL hopes to complete prior to next season. While it would be unwise to read very much into this partnership as a sign that those negotiations are making forward progress, it at least shows the two companies remain committed to working together in some capacity.
In 2022, the NFL purchased a stake in Skydance Media, which now makes the league a de minimis investor in the combined Paramount Skydance.
Three films, all of which are well into production, were highlighted in the report about the expanded partnership: the John Madden biopic Madden, a dramatized telling of former New York Giants running back John Tuggle’s “Mr. Irrelevant” story, and The Land, a fictionalized Hulu series about the Cleveland Browns.
“When you have an audience as big as the NFL’s, there are a lot of different demographics to service and engage even more deeply,” Skydance Sports head Jason Reed told the Los Angeles Times. “Those movies work as a fan service. They service towns, fans of those franchises, and they really connect. What they also do is pick up this other group of people who maybe wouldn’t watch a football game.”
The key for Skydance seems to be telling authentic stories without venturing into the “salacious” content that might upset the NFL.
“We’re not making this stuff up out of thin air,” said Dan Fogelman, the filmmaker working on The Land. “The characters are flawed and they do bad things, but the NFL has been great about that. I was worried up top, and it just hasn’t been an issue because we’re not out there looking to be salacious. We’re not trying to do ripped-from-the-headlines, crazy, exaggerated versions of reality. We want things that really happen, done accurately and in a cinematic way.”
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.