EXCLUSIVE: Veteran producer Tucker Tooley is partnering with Big3, the 3-on-3 basketball league founded by show biz multi-hyphenate Ice Cube and longtime entertainment executive Jeff Kwatinetz, for a docuseries chronicling its rise to prominence over the last seven years.
Not yet titled, the series will tell the unflinchingly truthful story of the first new sports league to succeed since the UFC. Each episode will delve into the challenges and controversies of the past seven seasons, as well as the eclectic personalities, pinnacles, and heartbreaks on the court as teams vie for the 2025 championship title. Additionally, the series will examine the ongoing off-the-court entrepreneurial challenges of bringing a new sport and league to market.
News of the Big3 series comes following the recent conclusion of the league’s seventh season — its most-viewed season on record. Fully financed, the project will be produced by Tooley under his Tooley Entertainment banner. No word yet on a director or other creative attachments.
Since its inception in 2017, Big3 has expanded from eight to 12 teams, with FIREBALL3, a new and improved version of traditional 3-on-3 basketball, being played in cities nationwide each summer. The league aired on Fox for its first two seasons and will return to CBS for primary distribution for the sixth consecutive season in 2025, when the league will transition from a touring model to each team representing home markets, including Miami, Houston, and Detroit, among others in the U.S. and internationally.
Big3 has quickly established itself as a driving force in basketball culture, whether on the court with the first female coaches of a men’s professional league, in the streets with the Big3 Street Tour, or in the community with the Young3 clinics. Over its history, the league has cultivated one of the most diverse and engaged fanbases across all five major sports, averaging 10,000 fans in-arena each weekend.
In a statement to Deadline, Big3 Co-CEO Ice Cube observed, “Leagues are launched every day, but the number of successes can be counted on two hands. Almost all fail within 1-2 years, let alone make it to eight seasons. We not only had to launch a league, but we also had to invent a sport – taking a worldwide amateur phenomenon and creating a professional product at the highest level. Fans won’t believe the trials and tribulations we have faced.”
Before founding the league, said Co-CEO Kwatinetz, “Cube and I truly thought we had seen it all, but we had no idea just how challenging it would be. On top of the general unfeasibility of starting a league, we’ve had to contend with COVID-19, near-bankruptcy, foreign spies, bribery scandals, and fierce opposition from the NBA.”
Despite the hurdles Ice Cube and Kwatinetz have faced in overseeing the league, said the former, “we’ve made more progress in the sport in seven years than any other league has in decades – creating space for women in sports, allowing CBD and alternative pain management, embracing streaming and influencers. Maybe it was crazy to think that two entertainment guys could disrupt the largest sport in the world, but it’s taken two true outsiders to innovate the game of basketball and create the type of progressive, forward-thinking league that players want to play in, and fans want to watch.”
“We did the impossible part,” stated Kwatinetz, “getting millions of people around the world to care about a new sport – now, it’s up to our players on the court to battle for the 2025 championship, up to Cube, myself, and our other valued investors and supporters to make season 8 the best yet, and up to Tucker to deliver a wildly entertaining and unforgivingly truthful series.”
“And we know that an A+ level producer like Tucker will bring the triumphant, often frustrating, and radically honest story of the BIG3 to life,” Ice Cube added.
Stated Tooley, “Ice-Cube and Jeff Kwatinetz are both innovators in their respective realms and to be able to unveil the vision on their creation is fascinating. BIG3 is not only just pushing sports boundaries but also reshaping cultural limits that I’m excited for the world to see.”
Over the course of his decades-long career, Tooley has produced films that have earned more than $2.5 billion at the worldwide box office. As CEO of Tooley Productions, he’s overseen the development and production of hit films such as Den of Thieves, Arthur the King, Concrete Cowboy, and The United States vs. Billie Holiday. Other notable credits include Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Beyond the Lights, Mike Flanagan’s Oculus, Scott Cooper’s Out of the Furnace, and David O. Russell’s The Fighter, to name just a few. Most recently, Tooley produced Lee Daniels’ much-discussed exorcism pic The Deliverance, which debuted on Netflix in August.
