Steph Curry is expected to attend the world premiere of Sundance Doc’s “Stephen Curry: Underrated” by Peter Nicks and Ryan Coogler

Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry is traveling to Utah, not for a game against the Jazz, but for an event in an entirely different arena: the Sundance Film Festival.

We’re told the future Hall of Famer is planning the world premiere of Stephen Curry: Underrated on Monday night January 23, the documentary about him directed by Peter Nicks and produced by Ryan Coogler, Nicks, Jenelle Lindsay and Erick Payton.

“The plan is that he will be there… The timing just worked,” Nicks tells Deadline. “You can never know 100 percent with someone like that… He will probably have to drop out. He has training the next day.”

The A24 and Apple Originals film documents the two-time league MVP who was not expected to survive in the NBA, let alone set the record for most 3-point buckets in his career.

“Far below the NBA standard for explosiveness and athleticism. At 6’2, “he’s extremely short,” a cold scouting report said of Curry. It is read to the camera at the beginning of the film by Reggie Miller, the former 3-point record holder. “Don’t rely on him to lead your team.”

The film reveals that despite being the son of Del Curry, a former NBA pro, and Sonya Curry, a gifted athlete herself, Curry was dismissed as a true talent from the start. It’s just that he was short for a basketball player.

“I was the undersized, skinny kid just trying to make it at the level I was playing at,” Curry says in the film. “I knew I could shoot.”

He had dreams of playing for Virginia Tech, his parents’ alma mater, but the school didn’t want him. Not a single Division 1 NCAA program has done so — with the exception of tiny Davidson College in North Carolina. There are many remarkable lessons in the film – about hard work and self-confidence, but also about the difference an important person like Davidson coach Bob McKillop can make in a young person’s life.

“Being seen is such a powerful factor, it’s such a powerful influencer in someone’s life,” notes Nicks. When Davidson saw this [Steph], when Coach McKillop saw him, it had a huge impact on his confidence. That was another part of the story we were trying to explore and tell.

Like Curry himself, Davidson was considered incapable of contending against the great powers—the Dukes, the Kentuckys, the Kansases. But led by Curry’s fatal disaster, McKillop’s team landed on college basketball’s biggest podium at the 2008 NCAA Tournament. This is the kind of inspirational sports story that gives goosebumps coughers.

“What really drew me to it as I learned more about his story and his journey was this time he spent with Davidson and this idea of ​​a coming-of-age story,” says Nicks, “this idea of ​​a story about the family outside the nuclear family — his children and [wife] Ayesha and Sonya and Del – that family around here [Davidson] a team that never expected to go as far as they could. We saw that as kind of a key image for the film … Davidson’s story just wasn’t told as far as we could tell.”

Two other quests underpin the film: Curry’s attempt to win another NBA title last year after many predicted the Warriors’ glory days were over, and his long-cherished desire to get his bachelor’s degree from Davidson. Curry left school after his junior year to enter the NBA draft.

“He achieved so much, but he never got a university degree and that was something he promised his mother,” says Nicks. “Sonya was the first in her family to go to university and that was always very important.”

Nicks has been in Oakland for a long time, in the Warriors’ backyard, so to speak, and Coogler – Director of Fruitvale station, Believe and the Black Panther Movies – grew up in Oakland. The filmmakers have known each other for ten years and a few years ago founded Proximity Media, a production company founded by Coogler, Coogler’s wife Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian and co-founded by Nicks, Ludwig Göransson and Archie Davis.

“We’ve always wanted to work on something together,” Nicks says of him and Coogler. “We were just looking for the right opportunity. And when Steph started thinking about telling his story, they reached out to us on A24 and the stars kind of aligned. Ryan is a huge Warriors fan. sit in court. I saw him watching games. I saw him and Zinzi there in the field.’

Stephen Curry: Underrated marks a return to Sundance for both Nicks and Cooller. The festival will honor Coogler on Thursday night with the first Sundance Institute Variety Visionary Award, recognizing an Institute alumnus who has done impressive work. It’s been 10 years since Cooller premiered Fruitvale station at Sundance, his feature debut (Nicks worked on this film).

Cooller served as executive producer lounge, Nicks’ film about the public school system in Oakland. This documentary premiered at Sundance in 2021 — one of two years Sundance was forced to go virtual due to the pandemic.

my last movie lounge, it was such a special and personal film. It was a little disheartening that we couldn’t share it with the public, especially with all the kids [from the film]’ said Nick. “No less for this film so we can share it with the Eccles audience [Sundance’s biggest venue]… we are so excited.”

Nicks says no premiere date has been set for Apple TV+ Stephen Curry: Underrated.

“We want to introduce the film to the public first at festivals,” he notes. “This is a process I have done with all my films. We want to remind people that this is a documentary in the tradition of independent films that I have done in the past. And so we’re going to do some shows at festivals in the spring and then kind of decide if we’re going to do a theatrical release or not.

Meanwhile, Steph Curry has a busy schedule at the track. His Warriors travel to Boston on Thursday night for a game against the Celtics – the team they defeated for the NBA title last year – followed by a road game against the Cleveland Cavaliers and a Sunday night home game against the Brooklyn Nets (the team that should). to him). Brother Seth plays). If all goes well, he will arrive in Sundance the next day.

Expect a big reception from a man who can be described as a popular star.

“Players like Kareem or Jordan or Kobe — definitely Kobe — LeBron, people see them as a god or something unattainable,” Nicks notes. “Whereas Steph – he’s not just a smaller guy like he’s my height, 6′ 2″, maybe 6′ 3″, skinny so people can relate to him, but which I think makes it more possible for people to relate to him like, is his humility, his demeanor, which, after meeting his family and spending time with them, I can tell you, goes right back to his parents, to Sonya, to Del, his siblings Seth and Sydel, the most amazing people. They’re just very humble, super nice people. And they were raised that way.”