Caltech story to become Ben Stiller comedy

Since their historic victory ended a quarter-century losing streak on the last day of the season, Caltech players have been hard at work.

The Division III team recently listed off their summer plans, which included players from that game gathering and analyzing financial and market data, working on a combined heat and power system, and conducting research related to video image capture and signal processing.

Yep, these guys are smart. They've lost a lot of basketball games. And now the Beavers' story will be told as a comedy.

According to Deadline, Disney recently acquired the remake rights to a documentary about the team in order to provide Ben Stiller's production company some fine material to work with.

If "Dodgeball" was a true underdog story, then how hilarious is Caltech's story going to be? That's what Rick Greenwald is curious to find out as well. It was his documentary, "Quantum Hoops", that profiled the team full of valedictorians a few years ago while they were still losing game after game.

From indieWIRE:

We can just keep our fingers crossed and a) hope it gets made, and b) hope it’s done as respectfully as you can. The comedy is obvious -- I have some laughs in my documentary-- just to be careful for the relationships I have with the players and the CalTech people, really cool people that I met. You don't want to do them wrong. They're very serious about their basketball, even if they never win, and they’re very sensitive to -- they understand the nerd angle and all the jokes that come along with that. They get it, they embrace it.

...

You know, do you want to be made fun of for being the most epic losers in the history of sports? You can only go so far before it really becomes insulting. You have to kind of walk that line.

I definitely walked the line successfully in the documentary. I had people come up and say, "I can't believe you didn't go for the comedy angle on this thing." And I'm like, "How could I shoot these kids and then turn around and turn it into a reality-type thing where you’re just going over the top?" If they didn't say something funny or do it on their own, I rarely put my comedy spin on it.

So while Stiller might play the role of the brainy Beaver who can't hit the broad side of a barn, let's remember that in the updated version of the story, Caltech is a winner.

Source: http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/34665/caltech-story-to-become-ben-stiller-comedy

Jorge Posada Lance Berkman Reegie Corona Juan Miranda Colin Curtis Kevin Russo