‘Toy Story’ Taking ESPN’s NFL Alt-Casts to Infinity and Beyond
ESPN announcer Drew Carter is deep into his film prep ahead of Sunday morning’s Falcons-Jaguars game in London, which he is calling. And I mean film prep.
As of Tuesday morning, he had rewatched Toy Story 1, 2, and 3, with Toy Story 4 still on the docket. Yes, he’ll study Atlanta and Jacksonville’s rosters plenty before the weekend, but he’s also set aside time to take notes on the Pixar classics, hunting for catch phrases that might translate come game time. “To infinity and beyond!” is a given. He wants to go deeper.
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Toy Story, which debuted in 1995, is Pixar’s first feature film and was the first-ever movie to be completely computer-animated. So the picture’s setting makes sense as the home for another round of innovation as the NFL’s first fully animated live broadcast. Sunday’s Toy Story Funday Football show could be the first of many such productions.
The NFL has already seen success with kids-focused alternate broadcasts and expanded its partnership with Nickelodeon to include a Super Bowl presentation this season. And ESPN has long championed the alternate broadcast, with the ManningCast’s breakout success on its corporate resume. Development of this project began soon after the NFL schedule was released.
“An alt broadcast, if done well and targeted with a clear audience in mind, can be really compelling and really incremental,” NFL Media COO Hans Schroeder said. “When Disney came [to us] with Toy Story, we were just thrilled with it. We think it’ll be such a fun, innovative way for fans and especially young fans to experience an NFL game.”
As part of The Walt Disney Company, ESPN will also be able to distribute the game globally on Disney+ (in addition to ESPN+ and NFL+) and leverage the company’s film properties to draw in new fans.
Pixar alone has launched several successful franchises, from Finding Nemo and A Bug’s Life to The Incredibles and Monsters, Inc., and each could offer something compelling to augment traditional NFL coverage. But ESPN and Disney execs identified Toy Story as the best fit for the opportunity, especially given its multi-generational reach.
And Andy’s bedroom, where Mr. Potato Head opened the first film 28 years ago, made for an obvious replacement for Wembley Stadium.
“Andy’s room is almost an agnostic environment where Andy could do whatever—he could set up a race track or a football field or a battlefield or a spaceship or whatever because it’s Andy’s imagination,” Pixar Animation Studios franchise creative director Jay Ward said. “In a way Andy’s room is sort of all of our minds when we go back and imagine scenarios as a kid again.”
However, before the Toy Story-themed alt-cast could hit the air, there were several real-world hurdles to clear—Buzz Lightyear and Woody came with a few strings attached. “We do have sort of written and unwritten rules for all of our franchises,” Ward said. “The biggest thing for Pixar is we really love to keep the storytelling intact.”
For Toy Story, that means the toys are only “alive” when no humans are around. They’re also toy-sized, meaning the entire broadcast has to exist at that scale, with the players looking like figurines themselves. “So, the sort of overarching thought was, ‘Hey, if Andy took his toys and made an NFL game happen in his room, what would it look like?’” Ward said.
This summer’s writers and actors strikes further limited what ESPN will be able to include Sunday, preventing the production from featuring new character dialogue. As a result, expect the broadcast to focus more on the game itself rather than turning into an installment in the Toy Story saga.
The NFL had its own set of requirements. Protective of its image, the league has loosened certain restrictions for its kid-friendly broadcasts but remains wary of letting others do too much with its most prized assets, such as the NFL shield. You’re unlikely to see it covered in slime, or pinned to Woody’s chest, anytime soon.
“The league was great to work with, guiding us through what was important to them and what was important for us to keep in mind as we were developing what the look was going to be,” ESPN VP of programming and acquisitions Tim Reed said. “It was definitely very iterative.” Ward chimed in from the Pixar side too, explaining that the movies’ green aliens enjoyed being grabbed by “The Claw” and that few of the toys had any in-universe understanding of the NFL, much less a favorite team.
On the backend, ESPN is using similar technology to the stack deployed for a well-received animated NHL broadcast earlier this year. This time, the process starts with the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, which tracks each player’s location in real time. Beyond Sports uses that data to create virtual representations of the athletes. In this case, it’s also using Hawk-Eye camera technology (in another bit of corporate synergy, Beyond Sports and Hawk-Eye are both owned by Sony) to track player limbs for more life-like recreations.
By moving to a fully digital world, broadcasters can do more than just add movie characters to the background of shots. Directors have the ability to change the viewpoint to any spot, whether that be on the sideline or inside a quarterback’s helmet, for instance.
Carter will call the game along with Booger McFarland and Pepper Persley. Pepper, who is 12 years old, has already called NFL, MLB, and NBA action. For those seeking a more traditional experience, Chris Fowler, Dan Orlovsky, Louis Riddick, and Laura Rutledge will offer a standard broadcast, also on ESPN+.
Before the debut Sunday, several Funday Football stakeholders already see the opportunity for spinoffs and sequels.
Beyond Sports CEO Sander Schouten envisions a future where young viewers are able to interact with the broadcast, swapping out characters or entire environments to make the feed their own, and even inserting their own avatars into the mix.
The number of options streaming viewers would have at that point would clearly be, well, infinite. Or maybe even beyond.
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