The youth of a community, even the most impoverished, represent hope for the future. And in Miami’s Liberty City, which was the community depicted in Barry Jenkins’ critically acclaimed film “Moonlight.” Now a new documentary series coming from LeBron James offers a different side of Liberty City, “Warriors of Liberty City,” co-executive produced by James with his business partner Maverick Carter, Jamal Henderson, and Evan Rosenfeld (who also directs), premieres Sept. 16 on Starz and focuses on the local youth football team.
“Beyond football, the Liberty City Warriors Optimist Club is a youth organization that sponsors sports teams, dance, cheerleading and academic support,” Broadcasting Cable reported.
The docu series follows Luther Campbell of 1990’s rap group 2 Live Crew, who founder the Warriors. He also coaches and mentors the youth, and the team over the years has produced future football stars, such as Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, Devonta Freeman, Antonio Brown, Duke Johnson and Teddy Bridgewater. This despite being in a community plagued by crime, poverty, out of misery, and poorly run public schools.
In all there will be six episodes.
This isn’t James’ first partnership with Starz. Starz also aired the scripted series “Survivor’s Remorse,” which James was a producer. “‘Survivor’s Remorse,’ inspired by James’ own life, featured a young basketball star figuring out how best to serve his community with the financial haul he’s acquired from basketball and endorsements,” The Undefeated reported.
“If you look at the body of work he’s doing right now, and you look at where he came from–him and Maverick and the rest of his team of guys and ladies–he understands,” said Campbell. “They look at this and they say, ‘Man, that was me who had to be taken home by the coach every day. That was me who had to get fed by the coach, be clothed by the coach.’ So those guys see a lot of their self in these kids, and they want to spread it to the world.”
James has been steadily building his entertainment company and venturing out with various projects. His barbershop late night talk show, “The Shop,” was recently picked up by HBO with the first episode airing on August 28. His SpringHill Entertainment shingle has offices on the Warner Bros. lot and James has various projects at HBO, including a multi-part documentary about Muhammad Ali directed by Antoine Fuqua and the documentary “Student Athlete,” airing Oct. 2.
Outside of sports and entertainment, James also recently opened the I Promise public school in Akron.
https://twitter.com/Scorp1179/status/1028622653802926082
An amazing job by Starz in this documentary of Liberty City Warriors Optimist Football Program – the film is filled with powerful moments that hit home for a lot of us who were in attendance … Luke, I see why you… https://t.co/EEhVLUUGGj
— Christopher Benjamin (@c_benjaminesq) August 9, 2018
