Muhammad Ali Fight Night Heist Drama Series Starring Kevin Hart Lands Series Order At Peacock
Kevin Hart Getty Images
The story of an infamous armed robbery after Muhammad Ali’s historic 1970 comeback fight is heading to streaming.
Kevin Hart will star in, and produce, Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, which has landed a series order at Peacock. It is based on the eponymous podcast and comes from Shaye Ogbonna and Will Packer.
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It will tell the story of how on the night of Ali’s defeat of Jerry Quarry, which came after he was banned from boxing for refusing to enter the military draft, hundreds of guests at an after-party were robbed at gunpoint, becoming one of the largest armed robberies the country has ever seen.
Shaye Ogbanna (Victoria Stevens)
The Atlanta-set limited series, which was created and written by Ogbonna, a writer on Penguin and The Chi, follow the fight and the heist introduced the world to the city dubbed “the Black Mecca,” and the cop and the hustler at the center of it all.
Ogbonna and Echo 3 exec producer Jason Horwitch will serve as showrunners on the series. They will exec produce alongside Hart, Bryan Smiley and Mike Stein for Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat, Packer and Sabrina Wind for Will Packer Media, Conal Byrne, Will Pearson and Carrie Lieberman for iHeartPodcasts, Jeff Keating and Lars Jacobson.
Keating is the longtime rights holder, while Novocaine writer Jacobson exec produced the podcast.
The story was previously developed as a feature film from Universal Pictures and Will Packer and Jacobson was the writer of that script.
It was subsequently turned into a podcast in 2020, launched on the 50th anniversary of the fight, by the Girls Trip producer, iHeartMedia and Keating’s Georgia-based production company Doghouse Pictures.
Craig Brewer (Dolemite Is My Name) will executive produce the series and direct the first two episodes. Tiffany Brown (Hartbeat) and Kenny Burns (Studio 43) will co-executive produce.
It is produced by Universal Television.