Lionsgate Television will present a scripted series about the real-life gambling scandal involving Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani.
The exhibition will stick to Ohtani’s history: his meteoric rise in MLB, his 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers and the devastating news that his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, stole $17 million from him to pay off his gambling debts.
The Dodgers fired Mizuhara after learning of the allegations. Mizuhara, 39, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of bank fraud and signing a false tax return. He faces up to 33 years in criminal time for those two offenses.
The series will be produced by Tony Award winner Scott Delman, for “The Book of Mormon” and “A Raisin in the Sun,” and sportswriter Albert Chen, Santa Monica-based Lionsgate announced Thursday.
“This is Major League Baseball’s biggest sports scandal since Pete Rose, and in the middle is its biggest star, which MLB has latched onto in the middle,” Chen said in a statement. “We’ll get into the middle of Hitale, a story of trust, betrayal, and the pitfalls of wealth and fame. “
The Ohtani series is just the latest in a long line of TV shows and videos that have made headlines. The rescue of a soccer team from a cave in Thailand in 2018 has been the subject of two videos, a Netflix series and documentary, and a National Geographic documentary. Documentary. ” Last year’s “Dumb Money” was based on Gamestop’s real-life stock market saga, one of several Hollywood projects unveiled to capitalize on the meme stock market sensation.
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