‘Champions’: Trailer Released for Woody Harrelson Basketball Movie

Woody Harrelson is heading back to the basketball court. On Monday, Focus Features revealed the first trailer for its basketball comedy Champions which stars Harrelson and is directed by Bobby Farrelly. Champions is scheduled to be released in theatres on March 24, 2023. 

The film follows a minor former minor league basketball coach (Harrelson) who is ordered by the court to manage a team of players with intellectual disabilities due to several unfortunate incidents. And while the coach has his doubts about the team, he realizes that they can make some noise if they work together. Champions is based on the 2018 Spanish film Campeones, which was released by Universal Pictures International, as mentioned by Deadline. The movie also stars  Kaitlin Olson, Cheech Marin, Ernie Hudson, Matt Cook, Madison Tevlin, Joshua Felder, Kevin Iannucci, Ashton Gunning, Matthew Von Der Ahe, Tom Sinclair, James Day Keith, Alex Hintz, Casey Metcalfe, Bradley Edens, and Champ Pederson. Harrelson is an executive producer along with  Brad Kessell, Alexander Jooss, Álvaro Longoria, Javier Fesser, and Luis Manso.

As mentioned, Harrelson is no stranger to basketball movies. In 1992, the actor starred in the hit film White Me Can’t Jump with Wesley Snipes and Rose Perez. The film made $90.8 million worldwide at the box office and was nominated as one of the 10 best sports films of all time by the American Film Institute. 

 “That was one of the funnest times I ever had doing a movie. I remember having an actual contest with Wes where I was trying to dunk. We were betting, and I was losing. Then he went to his trailer … and this [crew member] told me, ‘Why don’t you ever stretch?’ This is my first introduction to yoga,” Harrelson said in a 2017 interview with Yahoo, “and I started stretching, and the next thing you know I could dunk the ball. This is on a nine-and-a-half-foot rim, by the way; I couldn’t do it on a 10-foot rim. … He came out of his trailer, and I pretended I couldn’t, and we upped the bet and upped the bet and then slammed it. I’ll never forget the look on Wes’s face: It was joyous.” A remake of White Men Can’t Jump is set to be released on Hulu with Jack Harlow and Sinqua Walls as the lead actors.