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HBO Sports and Mandalay Sports Media are getting in the skyhook business. The two companies, in association with Iconomy Multi-Media & Entertainment, have begun production and commenced photography in Los Angeles on a documentary about the life and career of Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the National Basketball Association's all-time leading scorer. Also read: Why Sports Movies Like ‘Million Dollar Arm,’ ‘Draft Day’ Have Become Their Own Underdog Stories Scheduled to debut in early 2015 on HBO, the film will be directed by Ron Yassen, produced by Deborah Morales (“On the Shoulders of Giants”) and executive produced by Mike Tollin (“Hank Aaron: Chasing The Dream”). See.

Legendary Entertainment has mostly co-produced pics with Warner Bros. But the Jackie Robinson biopic 42 marked their first solo effort, and it paid off big, raking in $93 million domestic. So, THR reports, Legendary is eager to produce another baseball-centered drama. This time around their source material is One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach and a Magical Baseball Season, which was penned by senior Sports Illustrated writer Chris Ballard. Legendary has buzzed about screenwriter Wes Jones on board to adapt the book, and Mike Tollin, who has had a hand in creating Varsity Blues, Coach Carter and Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream, will produce. The movie adaptation will be a mix of The Bad News Bears, Hoosiers and Remember the Titans, offering a story of a ragtag team who rises to the challenge of competition thanks to an unconventional coach. Set in a small Illinois town in the...

After hitting it out of the park with Jackie Robinson biopic 42, Legendary Entertainment is stepping up to the plate with another baseball project. The company has picked up the rights to the book One Shot at Forever by Chris Ballard and has set Wes Jones to pen the script. Mike Tollin, whose credits include the sports movies Varsity Blues, Coach Carter, and Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream, will produce with Legendary, with Peter Guber serving as executive producer. Steven Gilder and Alec Chorches will co-produce. Photos: Take Me Out: Hollywood's Best Baseball Movies Titled One Shot at Forever:

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Fredric Golding says that while studying philosophy in college, he learned "how to ask the 'big questions.'" He adds, "I am proud to say I still ask the big questions and I am still discovering what makes us all tick, what compels us to act in the way we do in different situations." Golding is an industry vet, having worked in the biz for 25 years. He produced the documentary, "Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream," which was nominated for an Oscar in 1996 and directed "Hardwood Dreams: Ten Years Later" for Spike and created "Dead Tenants" for TLC. What it's about: Golding's "On the Mat" is on the surface a film that follows a high school wrestling team over the course of a season. Beneath that, it's a look at the pure spirit of heart, mind and body as manifested in the young wrestlers at Lake Stevens High School, in Lake Stevens,...

EW has confirmed that producers Mike Tollin (Varsity Blues, Coach Carter) and Glenn Rigberg (Struck By Lightning) have obtained the rights to make a feature film biopic about Henry “Hank” Aaron, the baseball legend who broke Babe Ruth’s decades-long career home-run record on April 8, 1974. This project has instantly become one of the hottest sports movie projects in Hollywood.

Barry Levinson (The Natural) is attached to direct, working with screenwriter Adam Mazer, who wrote Levinson’s HBO biopic on Jack Kevorkian, You Don’t Know Jack, which Rigberg exec produced. Based on Howard Bryant’s book The Last Hero: The Life Story of Henry Aaron,...

Wesley Snipes has signed on to narrate the Tollin/Robbins documentary Hardwood Dreams: Ten Years Later, a sequel to the company's 1993 docu about five basketball players from Southern California's Morningside High School. Veteran documentary filmmaker Fredric Golding -- who teamed with Tollin/Robbins to produce the Oscar-nominated documentary Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream -- has writing, directing and producing credits for the next installment of Hardwood. The first documentary, also narrated by Snipes, followed five players from the California State Champion Morningside High School basketball team: Sean Harris, Dwight Curry, Dominic Ellison, Stais Boseman and Corey Saffold. Stars of their high school team, the players were all recruited by top colleges, but their lives didn't go quite as planned. Hardwood Dreams: Ten Years Later catches up with them a decade after high school.