What a difference a day makes, or at least winning an award. Last year, a football movie called "Draft Day" started building steam with Ivan Reitman to direct and Kevin Costner to star, but it all seemingly fell apart when Paramount put the project in turnaround in October. But they likely wound up regretting that decision a little bit when two months later, the script by Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman wound up on top of the Black List. And with the holiday crush over, studio execs are back at work and Lionsgate may want to take this to the end zone.
Vulture reports that the studio is getting set to enter negotiations to pick up the project with Reitman to produce and direct and Costner to star. To refresh your memory, the story centers on the general manager of the Buffalo Bills (Costner's role) who spends the day trying to make sure he gets the number one pick in the NFL draft. Crucially, the project has the support of the NFL who (at least in the recent past) offered to clear branding and possibly co-finance the picture. We'd imagine those are conversations that will need to be had again, but it's the same material, so we think they'd be game.
We'd reckon all the ingredients — Reitman, Costner, NFL — would have to line up for Lionsgate to kick it through the uprights, but even if they don't, the top Black List script surely won't have a lack of interested buyers.