The sports documentary boom is upon us after the success of The Last Dance, and that means we may finally get a detailed account of the rise, fall, and rise again of one Tiger Woods. HBO announced it has acquired a two-part documentary film called Tiger, based on the best-selling biography on Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian.
The film will air in December across HBO platforms over the span of two weeks, premiering on Dec. 13 with the second installment on Dec. 20. It is directed by Matthew Heineman and Matthew Hamacheck, and has reportedly been in the works for at least two years.
“Since his introduction to the world at the age of two, Tiger Woods has inhabited our collective consciousness as a prodigy, a pioneer, a champion, a global icon, and then a tabloid headline,” said directors Heineman and Hamachek. “After months of research and countless hours of revelatory conversations, we discovered that he has always been a projection of outsized expectations. His father, his sponsors, and his fans all made Tiger Woods into whom they wanted him to be. Our goal was to dive deeper and create an unflinching and intimate portrait of a man, who like all of us, is imperfect and inherently human.”
After the controversy over the extent to which Michael Jordan was involved in the making of The Last Dance and how much his interviews dictated the direction of the film, this doc will take a different tact, orbiting around Woods without directly taking his perspective or creative oversight.
The key interview subjects for the documentary include long-time former caddie Steve Williams, golf legend Nick Faldo, Pete McDaniel (friend and biographer of Tiger’s father, Earl Woods), and Rachel Uchitel, the woman who was at the center of Tiger’s sex scandal in her first ever public interview.
We’re now looking at a month-long span in which Woods will defend his Masters title at the rescheduled event at Augusta National in mid-November, and then a doc centered about his life will hit screens less than a month later, so surely there will be a ton of Woods talk among sports fans this winter.
