A Kyrie Irving 'Uncle Drew' movie could be coming to a theater near you
We probably should’ve seen this coming. I mean, once word trickled out that Matthew Dellavedova was getting his own movie, it was only natural that Kyrie Irving would want one, too.
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Big news, fans of sport and the silver screen: the Cleveland Cavaliers’ All-Star point guard may be coming soon to a multiplex near you. Well, not that soon; there isn’t even a script yet. And not Kyrie, exactly. More like his alter ego.
That’s right: that soda commercial you liked is about to come back in style, according to Justin Kroll of Variety:
Sources tell Variety that Temple Hill Entertainment has acquired the feature film rights to Irving’s “Uncle Drew” Pepsi commercials. “Skiptrace” scribe Jay Longino is set to write the script and Irving is attached to reprise the role of Drew.
Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, and John Fischer will produce the film, described as a love letter to basketball. The original Pepsi Max advertisements showed Irving, in full make-up, playing a 70-plus-year-old man, Drew, who would show up to pick-up basketball games and school kids half his age, while also reminiscing about how the game used to be played. […]
Described as “Blues Brothers” in the pick-up basketball world, Longino’s pitch shows Drew and his old squad on the legendary Rucker Park basketball court in Harlem. Years later Drew is talked into returning to the courts to compete in a tournament and goes on a road trip to round the old squad up to play.
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That, as you might remember, was basically the plot of the four Uncle Drew spots that Pepsi produced between 2012 and 2015. At the prompting of the great Bill Russell, once Irving’s elderly character got back on his feet and back on the court, he set out in search of his former in-story teammates and rivals, linking up with future actual teammate Kevin Love, Nate Robinson, Maya Moore and Ray Allen.
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Once you got the gist of the goof — exceptionally good basketball player shows up at local run dressed as old person, surprises average dudes with crossovers and dunks, crowd goes wild — the clips might not have had quite enough story or jokes to sustain your interest for a full five minutes. Imbuing Uncle Drew and his associates with enough narrative and comedic punch to carry a 90-minute feature film seems like a really, really tall order … but then, people said the same thing about “MacGruber,” and that’s one of the funniest movies of the past decade. Hope springs eternal; get Ryan Phillippe on the horn and grab the celery.
According to screenwriter Longino, he plans to create a story that will hopefully “inspire [people] to not let things like their age, or their size, or their past failures limit what they’re capable of accomplishing.” Listen, I’m all for sports movies about the power of positivity, but Longino and Kyrie better be careful not to tread too heavily on Delly’s grit-and-never-giving-up turf. Nobody wants to see a fake 70-year-old get his knee rolled up or take a stray shot to the crotch of his sweatpants. I’m not saying; I’m just saying.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
