In “Dodgeball,” Ben Stiller‘s memorable White Goodman squared off against Vince Vaughn and a ragtag bunch of inept losers who rallied together to inconceivably become champions of the titular sport. The formula already worked one time, so why not try it with basketball instead?
We can only guess that’s the thinking behind Stiller’s Red Hour production company teaming with Disney for a remake of the 2007 documentary “Quantum Hoops.” But seeing as this is at the mouse house, this will probably be more in the vein of “inspirational sports movie” rather than “raunchy comedy.” Directed by Rick Greenwald, the original documentary tells the tale of the hapless, woefully terrible Caltech basketball team, made up of some very smart guys who couldn’t play basketball to save their lives, as they try desperately to end a losing streak that has spanned two decades. They eventually did break the streak in 2007 (after the movie came out) and finally broke their conference play losing streak earlier this year. Go Team Nerd!
So yeah, you can totally see how this can be easily be adapted into your standard stand-up-and-cheer-the-underdogs tale. So no surprise that the man hired to pen the screenplay is Stan Chervin, who recently earned a story credit on “Moneyball” (which went through about a number of different drafts, don’t ask; but Chervin needed to go to arbitration to land his name on the movie) the forthcoming tale of another group of nobodies who became somebodies. So all hail the geeks. No word yet on which director will try to make the three point shot at the buzzer. [Deadline]