Chris Webber developing ‘Fab Five’ limited TV series
The story of Webber and his Fab Five teammates has been told before but never from his point of view
Chris Webber is telling his version of the famed Michigan Fab Five basketball squad.
The NBA star turned broadcaster is working with Russell Redeaux, the head of development at Cashmere Originals to develop a series about the Fab Five based on the NBA star’s autobiography, By God’s Grace, per The Hollywood Reporter.
“Once Chris and I had a chance to get together and hear his vision for Webber/Gilbert Productions and the projects they’re working on and interested in making, there’s definitely an alignment with our vision at Cashmere Originals to tell multicultural stories of inclusion,” Redeaux said to THR.
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“With that alignment and me being a guy who grew up in the same era of the Fab Five, it was sort of a dream come true project to bring it into our company fold and work with Chris.”
The story of the Fab Five – Ray Jackson, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, Jalen Rose, and Webber has been told before but never from his point of view. He didn’t participate in The Fab Five, a 2011 ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the team. Webber was said to be estranged from the other four, including former best friend Jalen Rose. The doc, seen by 2.7 million viewers was the network’s highest-rated documentary at the time.
This version will take a deeper look into the story of the players who attended the University of Michigan in the 90s and are considered one of, if not the best, recruiting class in college basketball history.
Their style and their play made them enormously popular but they fell short of an NCAA championship due to Webber’s infamous time-out call during the 1993 championship game. In a mental error, Webber called a time-out that the team didn’t have and North Carolina converted two shots on the ensuing technical foul. They won the championship 77-71.
“What I think is different about it is I’ve never spoken about my time with the Fab Five,” said Webber to THR. “There’s a lot of behind the scenes that not many people know about, and it’s about so many things. Hopefully, I’ll be able to express those things, whether it’s about Detroit or the work ethic of the city and the factories — all those things that made us.”
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Webber joined the Michigan Wolverines in 1991, going on to become an NBA Rookie of the Year, a five-time NBA All-Star, and a five-time All-NBA team member. He’s now an NBA analyst for TNT and has a couple of other projects in the works.
“One of the things we discovered in the process of getting to know Chris and learning about the projects he’s working on, the autobiography, the documentary, we discovered that Chris is a brilliant writer in his own right,” Redeaux said. “So this project is through his lens, and him contributing significantly to the development and packaging of this limited series.”
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