HBO Sports Acquires U.S. and Canada Television Rights From Priority Pictures To Zimbalist Brothers’ Award-Winning Documentary, "Momentum Generation"
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- Category: Entertainment News
- Published on Saturday, 13 October 2018 22:33
HBO has acquired the U.S. and Canada television rights to Jeff and Michael Zimbalist's eye-opening feature-length documentary film Momentum Generation, which made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year and won the Audience Award.
Momentum Generation is produced by Justine Chiara, Lizzie Friedman, Tina Elmo, and Colby Gottert. The Zimbalists also wrote and produced via their company All Rise Films. Sundance Productions' Robert Redford and Laura Michalchyshyn served as executive producers on the film alongside Karen Lauder and Greg Little of Priority Pictures. Priority Pictures also financed the project.
The documentary will debut on Tuesday, Dec. 11 at 10:00 p.m. (ET/PT) on HBO.
Momentum Generation will also be available on HBO NOW, HBO GO, HBO ON DEMAND and partners' streaming platforms. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Content Group is planning an international digital release on Nov. 5.
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Momentum Generation features never before seen archival footage and raw interviews of surfing's most legendary crew – including Shane Dorian, Taylor Knox, Rob Machado, Pat O'Connell, Kalani Robb, Kelly Slater, Taylor Steele, Benji Weatherley, and Ross Williams. Captured over the course of multiple years, the surfers reflect on the complexity of their brotherhood and competition that has shaped their shared emotional journey.
"We're proud to be the home for Momentum Generation, a film obviously about a group of surfers at the zenith of the sport, but more subtlety about their lifelong friendships: how they're formed, strengthened, lost and — with some luck — rediscovered," said Peter Nelson, executive vice president, HBO Sports. "The Zimbalist brothers take us on an adrenaline-fueled journey spanning three decades, and the intimacy with which they reveal the ups and downs of some of surfing's biggest stars makes this film unlike any of its kind."
Endeavor Content handled U.S. sales on the film and negotiated the deal on behalf of the filmmakers, with HBO.
Priority Pictures recently produced The Land directed by Steven Caple Jr. (Creed 2) with Nas as executive producer and Paul Weitz's Bel Canto starring Julianne Moore & Ken Watanabe. Justine Chiara is a talent manager who represented the musical project 'The Surfers,' with Kelly Slater & Rob Machado. Laura Michalchyshyn is a producer and co-founder of Sundance Productions whose previous projects include Emmy®-nominated documentary All The President's Men Revisited, Death Row Stories, Ocean Warriors and Chicagoland series.
ABOUT PRIORITY PICTURES
Formed in 2015, Priority Pictures is a production and financing company dedicated to developing, financing and producing high quality feature films and television series for the worldwide marketplace. The company's slate includes The Stanford Prison Experiment (which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award as well as the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival), The Land directed by Steven Caple Jr., starring Erykah Badu and executive produced by Nas, and Michael Thelin's psychological thriller Emelie.
Most recent titles include the adaptation of Anne Patchett's best-selling novel Bel Canto starring Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe as well as the award-winning documentary Momentum Generation directed by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist. Priority is currently in development on the television adaptation of The Bell Jar starring Dakota Fanning, and Mother's Milk written and to be directed by Sundance winner Miles Joris-Peyrafitte.
ABOUT MICHAEL AND JEFF ZIMBALIST
Emmy® and Peabody award-winning filmmakers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist released the critically-acclaimed Nossa Chape earlier this summer with Fox and previously released the award-winning documentaries The Two Escobars, Youngstown Boys, Favela Rising and their 2016 scripted feature Pelé: Birth of a Legend. Their feature documentary Give Us This Day, executive produced by Vince Vaughn, will be released later this year.
ABOUT ALL RISE FILMS
All Rise Films was formed in 2004 by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, Emmy® and Peabody Award winning writers, directors, and editors whose films have broadcast on HBO, Netflix, PBS, CBS, Fox, ESPN, Showtime, among others, and been theatrically distributed worldwide. In June 2018, the brothers' SXSW favorite Nossa Chape was theatrically released in 21 markets throughout the U.S. and broadcast by Fox.
Previously, their film The Two Escobars premiered at Cannes and Tribeca, won 4 Gold Medals at the NY Film/TV Awards, was nominated for an Emmy and WGA award. Favela Rising was shortlisted for the Academy Award and among its 36 awards are the IDA's Grand Prize and Best New Director at Tribeca. Their other notable films are Pelé, produced by Academy Award winner Brian Grazer, Youngstown Boys, which won an Emmy with ESPN Films, and Bollywood; The Greatest Love Story, which premiered at Cannes with Wild Bunch.
ABOUT SUNDANCE PRODUCTIONS
Robert Redford's production company has developed and produced innovative fiction and non-fiction television and documentaries for all platforms. Founded with Laura Michalchyshyn, the company has partnered with leading storytellers, directors, and producers for authentic tent-pole productions.
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Productions include the Animal Planet series Ocean Warriors, AMC series The American West, Death Row Stories for CNN (with Alex Gibney/Jigsaw Productions), Discovery's Emmy®-nominated documentary All the President's Men Revisited, the PBS/BBC documentary The March (with John Akomfrah), and Robert Redford's The Salk Institute, part of the 3D anthology series Cathedrals Of Culture (with Wim Wenders).
ABOUT HBO SPORTS
Over the past three decades, HBO Sports has earned a reputation as one of sports television's most prolific storytellers. HBO Sports has been a trailblazer, earning 11 prestigious George F. Peabody Awards for production excellence in long-form programming and introducing a host of innovations and enhancements to increase subscriber satisfaction. Since 1991, HBO Sports has also earned 135 Sports Emmy® Awards and has been recognized with four duPont-Columbia University awards for excellence in broadcast journalism. The recent HBO Sports documentary presentation Andre the Giant is the most viewed sports documentary film ever at HBO.
ABOUT UPHE CONTENT GROUP
Headquartered in London, UPHE Content Group is a repertoire center of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, acquiring and producing multi-genre entertainment for distribution across theatrical, home entertainment, television and digital platforms on a worldwide basis. UPHE Content Group is part of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, a unit of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group. Universal Filmed Entertainment Group (UFEG) produces, acquires, markets and distributes filmed entertainment worldwide in various media formats for theatrical, home entertainment, television and other distribution platforms, as well as consumer products, interactive gaming and live entertainment.
The global division includes Universal Pictures, Focus Features, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Brand Development, Fandango, DreamWorks Animation Film and Television and Awesomeness. UFEG is part of NBCUniversal, one of the world's leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production and marketing of entertainment, news and information to a global audience. NBCUniversal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment.
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