The animating concept of Game 7, the anthology Prime Video docuseries from Words + Pictures, is right there in the title.
In a best-of-seven series to determine champions in the NHL, NBA and Major League Baseball, moments in the final game (whenever it occurs) are instantly memorable due to the intensely pressurized circumstances. Any New Yorker who was alive in 1994 can tell you where they were when the Rangers ended a 54-year drought and won the Stanley Cup. Even-longer-suffering Chicago Cubs fans survived extra innings and a rain delay on the road to see their team win its first World Series in 108 years.
“It is the ultimate prism through which you can view the whole experience of sports and, by extension, how sports affects the broader culture,” Words + Pictures founder and CEO Connor Schell told Deadline in an interview. “The stakes are, by definition, incredibly high and it just crystallizes what it is to be a player and a fan in that moment.”
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A range of perspectives on Game 7s, including athletes, coaches/managers and media figures, are featured in the series, which premieres today. Along with the Cubs and Rangers sagas, episodes will focus on the New York Yankees’ rivalry with the Boston Red Sox (Exhibit A: the 2003 American League Championship Series); the 1987 Stanley Cup Final between the Edmonton Oilers and Philadelphia Flyers; and the 2006 NBA Finals duel between the Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs. Mark Messier, the NHL Hall of Famer who helped will the ’94 Rangers to the Cup, appears on camera and is also one of the show’s producers.
Schell, who co-created ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary franchise during his time as an executive at the Disney-owned sports outlet, founded Words + Pictures in 2021 with backing from Chernin Entertainment. It has been a hive of activity in the intervening years, setting up a raft of docs rooted in the sports realm but also branching out beyond it with projects like feature doc Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.
As live sports continues to exert a grip on viewers, with streaming services like Prime Video throwing their hat in the ring, sports-related programming is seeing robust buy-side demand. As the sector evolves and audiences become accustomed to digging into docs to feed their fandom, anthologies have proven to be valuable frames for a wide range of stories. 30 for 30 established that template two decades ago, one that more recent entries like Netflix’s Untold have emulated. “Anthologies can give you a lot of flexibility and an ability to keep viewers engaged,” Schell said.
Pressed for his own most memorable Game 7 moment, Schell explains that he grew up in Kansas City and must therefore cite the 2014 World Series. “It was a rough one,” he laughs of the 3-2 loss by the Royals to the San Francisco Giants. “But the very next year, they came back and won it all.”