After 20 seasons, the legendary LeBron James is bringing his real-life origin story to the screens.
Peacock’s first-look trailer for Shooting Stars, the highly-anticipated biopic about the early life of the NBA superstar, is out! According to NBC News, the story follows a young James’ rise to icon status within the sport, but not without the adversities he and his childhood best friends had to overcome.
“People think they know my story, but this is our story,” James remarks in the opening scene of the trailer. “This is how I met my brothers and how we became family.”
The upcoming film is based on the book by James himself and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Friday Night Lights, Buzz Bissinger. Set in the 1990s, the Shooting Stars were a motley bunch of kids –James and his best friends — from Akron, OH, who first got acquainted on a youth basketball team of the same name when they were ten and eleven years old.
Although they faced challenges all too typical of inner-city America, the “Fab Four,” with tight bonds, tasted glory when they qualified for a national championship tournament in Memphis.
“United by their love of the game and their yearning for companionship, they quickly forged a bond that would carry them through thick and thin (a lot of thin) and, at last, to a national championship in their senior year of high school,” as written in the book description.
Directed by Chris Robinson, the film stars elite high school small forward Marquis “Mookie” Cook
as James in his film debut, as well as his teammates Caleb McLaughlin (Stranger Things) as Lil Dru, Avery S. Wills, Jr. (Swagger) as Willie McGee, and Khalil Everage (Cobra Kai) as Sian Cotton. The screenplay was written by Frank E. Flowers, Tony Rettenmaier and Juel Taylor.The boys’ friendship gets tested when Lil Dru is forced onto junior varsity. But that doesn’t keep the Fab Four down. The crew decided to transfer to a predominantly white Catholic school so they could all play varsity together.
However, it takes their new coach, played by Dermot Mulroney (August: Osage County), as well as former rival Romeo Travis (Sterling “Scoot” Henderson), to help them find their footing on the team.
The film is set to premiere only on Peacock on June 2.