| Stephen Curry is used to making long shots. |
| With the debut this weekend of his first animated feature film, "Goat," the Golden State Warriors star enters a new and difficult arena — the realm of original animated movies. |
| In recent years, animated sequels have done well at the box office — Disney and Pixar's 2024 follow "Inside Out 2" crossed $1 billion globally, as did last year's "Zootopia 2" — but new stories have struggled in theaters. |
| "Goat" is the latest effort by athletes to leverage their sports fame into other arenas — with mixed success. Lakers star Kobe Bryant famously created Granity Studios, which produced the 2017 Oscar-winning short film "Dear Basketball." Other athletes have also entered the movie and TV business, including Lakers star LeBron James with his SpringHill Company and NFL quarterback Peyton Manning's Omaha Productions. |
| So far, "Goat" is off to a good start. |
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| The movie pulled in $50.6 million in global box office revenue this weekend, a strong debut for a production that cost $80 million and was more than seven years in the making. |
| "It's our first real big swing," Curry told me in an interview ahead of the film's release. |
| He said he hopes audiences "dream big" after seeing the film and remember that "no matter what naysayer or critic comes at you, your opportunity can be there if you're ready for it, and you have the confidence." |
| Produced by Sony Pictures Animation and Curry's Unanimous Media production company, "Goat" centers on a goat named Will who dreams of joining the professional league for "roarball" (basically a more chaotic version of basketball), despite being told he's too small. |
| Though the original idea was loosely based on a book in which animals played basketball, the film's narrative echoes Curry's own journey to the NBA, which included overcoming naysayers who doubted his skill and size would make him a star. |
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| The film's title, along with the characters' teamwork, is intended to spark conversation about what it really means to be the greatest of all time and that there is space for many GOATs, Curry said. |
| Does that mean Curry is formally declaring himself part of the age-old GOAT debate in the NBA? |
| "Like I said, it's a great conversation starter," he said, chuckling. |
| Curry, who serves as a producer on the film, also voices one of Will's teammates, a giraffe named Lenny. Another contribution was making sure the animals moved as smoothly as real-life basketball players. |
| He brought in former Warriors teammate Andre Iguodala as a consultant, and animators went to a few NBA games and watched footage of Warriors practices. As a result, there are some unmistakable NBA Easter eggs, including Will miming Curry's shimmy, his "night night" gesture and chomping his mouthguard. |
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| "There was a lot of, not just verisimilitude to the game play that he brought to us, but to our character development as well," said Sony Pictures Animation producer Michelle Raimo Kouyate. |
| "How it would feel to be out on the court for the first time, what it feels like to be an underdog, what it feels like to be someone at the top of your game, what it feels like to have all eyes on you," Kouyate added. |
| Curry founded his media banner in 2018, just two years after his historic unanimous selection as NBA MVP (hence the production company's name). The company is based in Culver City and has about 20 employees. |
| Unanimous Media has produced TV series like the golf-focused game show "Holey Moley," as well as documentaries and shorts, such as "The Baddest Speechwriter of All." The latter, which tells the story of Clarence B. Jones, who worked for Martin Luther King Jr., recently won an award at the Sundance Film Festival. |
| The company, which also has podcast and publishing arms, focuses on projects related to sports, family and faith. Though Unanimous Media will do some traditional faith-based content, its definition of faith is largely with a "small f," says Chief Executive Erick Peyton, meaning its projects simply depict people of faith or who have faith. |
| "That, to me, is how you leverage basketball for an even greater level of impact," Curry said. "It's been an amazing journey so far, and we feel like we're really just getting started." |
| The company has about 25 to 30 projects on its active slate and has partnerships with Universal and iHeartMedia, Peyton said. He declined to discuss the company's finances but said revenues had increased substantially in 2025. |
| Among the biggest challenges facing athlete-led companies like Unanimous Media is finding ways to connect to a broader audience beyond their fan base, said Brandon Katz, director of insights and content strategy at data firm Greenlight Analytics. |
| "Their brands and slates are often built around the athletes themselves," he said. "This makes it difficult to diversify and create in-demand programming that doesn't feature the central person, which is absolutely necessary for the long-term health of these companies." |
| That's a future Unanimous Media is trying to avoid. |
| "We want it to be able to tell inspirational stories, and almost for people to not really remember that Stephen is the one that was the founder," Peyton said. "We want this company to live beyond Stephen and I." |
Stuff We Wrote |
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Number of the week |
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| The Seattle Seahawks' Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots drew in 124.9 million viewers, short of the record 127.7 million who tuned in last year. |
| But the real winner that day was Bad Bunny, whose halftime performance averaged 128.2 million viewers — more than the game itself. At its peak, the show hit 137.8 million watchers. |
What I'm watching |
| I promise this is not becoming an Olympics newsletter, but the majority of my TV viewing this week has unsurprisingly been the Milan-Cortina Games, again. |
| The first upset for me was the ice dance competition. If you haven't heard all the controversy about the results, my colleague Thuc Nhi Nguyen wrote a good recap of the finals and all of the backstory. |
| Then on Friday, I was shocked to see Ilia Malinin's disastrous free skate program. Another thing I did not expect — a routine from Italy's Daniel Grassl set to the music of 2024's "Conclave" — complete with the dramatic starting line: "The pope is dead." |
