If you thought LeBron James would end his storied career with the Cleveland Cavaliers, think again.
The monumental basketball player, alongside representatives from New Line Cinema and Maverick Carter’s Springhill Entertainment, have acquired all rights to a viral video from the 2015 NBA Draft, Deadline reports. The video, previously owned by Elite Daily, depicts the millennial humor company’s senior comedic writer, Connor Toole, pretending to be someone very different.
“Normally, I write,” says Toole in the video. “But tonight, I’m getting drafted by the Utah Jazz in the NBA Draft.”
The nearly seven-foot-tall comedian masquerades around Barclays Center dressed in a crisp suit and sunglasses, the typical apparel of an NBA hopeful, and poses with fans who wish him all the luck. He doesn’t even need to say a word, other than “Thank you.” While college athletes around him hear their names called by various teams and walk out, with a cap on their head, crowded by cameras, Toole stands around, until it ends. He then walks out, throws on a Jazz cap, and takes the subway to Manhattan, where, again without saying a word to suggest anything, people begin flocking him to take selfies with one of the NBA’s newcomers. Toole tosses champagne, hangs in clubs with beautiful women, and receives countless congratulatory hugs from strangers.
The video accumulated a respectable 4 million views and got tossed in sports talking heads’ conversations, but eventually, NBA fans and the duped moved on. The heads of Madica Productions, Jeff Tahler and Shawn Sachs, decided that the video deserved more than a glimpse of spotlight. Tahler and Sachs hailed the attention of Maverick Carter and Springhill, whose piqued interest snagged Madica a conversation with New Line.
Eventually, the project resulted in a phone call to Carter’s childhood friend, LeBron James, who agreed to join the project as a producer, along with Tahler. The end result will be a comedy show, whose plot will directly derive from the Elite Daily video. Though little more is known so far about the show itself, it will for certain attract the attention hoops fans gave Toole that night.
The to-be-named comedy will also continue LeBron James’s budding career in Hollywood. Last summer, the basketball star played himself in Amy Schumer’s movie Trainwreck. James also recently appeared in animated form in the Cartoon Network show Teen Titans Go!, again as himself. While no one knows whether James will make a cameo in his own show upcoming, one thing is fairly clear–it’s pretty obvious that James will likely play himself.
In that sense, the celebrated basketball player will be continuing his career with the Utah Jazz, possibly stretching into his retirement from the court (sorry, Cleveland). As the project is still in early days, no word has been released as of yet as to who will be cast or when the show can be expected to air.