Kevin Durant and Brian Grazer Set to Develop Series for Apple

February 13, 2018

Deadline reports NBA all-star Kevin Durant is teaming up with producer Brian Grazer for a new drama series on Apple.

The basketball-themed scripted series entitled Swagger will draw “inspiration from Durant’s childhood playing Amateur Athletic Union basketball in metropolitan Washington, D.C, where aspiring young athletes and their families find themselves swept up into the youth-sports economy at a startling early age.” The series will be produced by Durant’s Thirty Five Media along with Grazer’s Imagine Television, which he co-founded with director Ron Howard. Both Durant and Grazer are set to executive produce with Imagine’s Francie Calfo and Thirty Five Media’s Rich Kleiman joining them in executive producing duties.

Durant has experienced a phenomenal career with the NBA for over ten years. The current small forward for the Golden State Warriors has earned a number of major accolades including an NBA championship, an MVP award and two Olympic gold medals, just to name a few. He took to his Twitter to announce his excitement with this upcoming project, tagging his business partner Kleiman and Thirty Five Media’s respective accounts.

So excited to partner with Imagine and Apple on this series…much more to come @richkleiman @thirtyfivemedia https://t.co/ZC21fSkXIe

— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) February 13, 2018

Reggie Rock Bythewood is set to write and direct for the series. His previous credits include co-writing the screenplay for the 2009 biopic Notorious and working with Imagine on the ten-part Fox series Shots Fired. Variety notes that the development of this series “marks the latest high-profile project in Apple’s ever-growing originals slate.” The company has a number of other straight-to-series orders they executed including a collaboration between Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon on a morning show drama and an upcoming Damien Chazelle (La La Land) drama series.