CHICAGO — When “The Last Dance” with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls ends its ESPN run, get ready for Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire.
Lance Armstrong and Bruce Lee too.
ESPN on Tuesday announced it will run “30 for 30” documentaries on four successive Sundays once the “The Last Dance” concludes its five-week, 10-episode run on May 17.
Succeeding Jordan and company on May 24 and 31 will be “Lance,” a two-part look at once-inspirational, then infamous, blood-doping cyclist Armstrong from director Marina Zenovich.
Bao Nguyen’s “Be Water” on martial artist and actor Lee follows on June 7.
But Chicagoans are likely most interested in the June 14 telecast of “Long Gone Summer,” director A.J. Schnack’s examination of the Cubs’ Sosa, the Cardinals’ McGwire and the steroid-tainted 1998 chase of Roger Maris’ home run record.
Both McGwire and Sosa submitted to lengthy interviews for the project, according to ESPN, which said the musical score was provided by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who’s from the St. Louis area and now lives in Chicago.
“It’s a great feeling to bring three more epic documentary projects to sports fans who so need it right now,” Libby Geist, vice president and executive producer of ESPN Films and Original Content, said in a statement.
Both “Lance” and “Be Water” had premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. Plans to present “Long Gone Summer” at the Tribeca Film Festival were scuttled by the new coronavirus pandemic.
The three documentaries will be made available on ESPN Plus immediately after their premieres, joining all the other documentaries in the “30 for 30” series.
The first two episodes of “The Last Dance” on April 19 set a record for the most-viewed ESPN documentary content, averaging a combined 6.1 million viewers nationally on ESPN and ESPN2.
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