Jeter an impresario in need of a studio
Former Yankee Derek Jeter is hoping to crack a new sort of lineup.
The 42-year-old’s media company, The Players’ Tribune, is shopping a story around Hollywood about the hardscrabble life of a former NFL player.
TPT has optioned the rights to the story of Vernon Turner, who was raised by a drug-addicted mom.
It would be the first movie from TPT, which Jeter founded days after hanging up his pinstripes in 2014.
TPT and Magic Hour Productions, an independent film company, would produce the movie in conjunction with Creative Artists Agency, which was recently retained to lead TPT’s charge into film and TV.
Since its launch as a digital-only publication, TPT has published first-person stories from 900 athletes with a view to- ward bringing fans and players closer together.
The story of Turner, 49, who played on four NFL teams in the 1990s, appeared in May as a “Letter to My Younger Self.”
It’s a tear-jerker of a tale about how he advised his 15-year-old self — already the de facto parent of four younger siblings — to stop praying his heroin-addicted mom would die.
“In fact, do the opposite,” he writes. “Go tell Mom you love her.”
The project still doesn’t have a studio or a distributor, but it does have a Hollywood connection in founding TPT investor Thomas Tull — who established Legendary Entertainment, a backer of such hits as “The Dark Knight,” “Jurassic World” and “Straight Outta Compton.”
Tull, who in January sold Legendary to China’s Dalian Wanda Group for $3.5 billion in cash, also serves on TPT’s board.