In addition to the highly-hyped Black Friday NFL game, Amazon is also supporting its side of holiday sports content this week with a new documentary series about the history of the best-selling pigskin-based video game Madden NFL .
No, this timing is not a coincidence. Madden’s publisher, EA Sports, is keenly aware of Turkey Day’s association with the series’ namesake, Hall of Fame football coach and iconic commentator John Madden. is.
“Thanksgiving is synonymous with Coach Madden. He called about 20 Thanksgiving games as an announcer and participated in various holiday traditions,” said Darryl, Executive Vice President and General Manager of EA Sports. Holt said. variety. “It became football’s calling card around the Thanksgiving holiday.”
Throughout his career, Madden was closely involved in the development of the game, formerly known as “John Madden Football,” until EA signed a long-term rights deal with the NFL in 1990, and Holt said: He said EA Sports is considering ways to communicate that. The story of the franchise and Madden’s influence over the years. Then came Amazon, which has been working hard to solidify its position in the football community since setting up its Thursday Night Football broadcast agreement from 2023 to 2033.
“Filmmakers and Amazon approached us and we were thinking about how to tell the story and the legacy of Coach Madden’s involvement and the longevity of Madden NFL as a franchise (now in its 36th year). “So we were already pretty receptive,” Holt said. “So when that opportunity came up, we naturally said, let’s dig deeper and see how we can make this happen. We have great relationships with Prime and the filmmakers. I’m happy to be able to peel back the curtain and open up the archives about things that I haven’t really shared or talked about before.”
According to Amazon’s Prime Video, “It’s in the Game: Madden NFL” is “against all odds, from its old-school 8-bit origins to its success as an annual staple, a hitherto untold story. Revealing the Madden NFL Story. What started out as an unlikely pairing of a computer guru and a football legend sparked a revolution and caused an uproar between the world of jocks and geeks. They were supposed to fail. Rather, their game changed the game, and so did our culture. ”
The four-part series features Holt, current EA Sports executives and members of the Madden NFL team, includes never-before-seen footage from the series’ 30 years in the making, and features developer Final touches are being made for next year’s Madden NFL 25.
“Making a game as deep and big as ‘Madden’ every year is a huge challenge and complex. This is the most complex sports game to make,” Holt said. “So behind the scenes they will have a better understanding of how this works, how it fits together and the challenges that may arise, both past and present. It will show the perspective of game developers, and we hope that understanding will further increase their awareness of what they already love.”
Produced by A+E Factual Studios Group, Michael Strahan’s SMAC Productions, Misher Film, and MTP, and directed by Nathan Caswell and Jeremiah Zagar, the doc will appeal to both long-time fans of the Madden franchise and a younger audience. The purpose is It entered the NFL game at a very different time for the sport.
“You have to look at all the Madden fans, but it’s clear that there are two schools where you can simply separate the generations. It’s a new generation of fans who might consume the sport differently. They Perhaps you’re an athlete or following highlights, but not necessarily sitting down. People who sit on their couch and watch a football game for three or four hours, and who grew up with the sport and remember John Madden as a coach, or certainly as a Hall of Fame broadcaster and coach. There are people,” Holt said. “So it’s important to understand that people understand what Madden is, in terms of how it started, how long it’s been around, and what it takes to make a game a nostalgic journey through the past. All of this has been brought together in a docuseries to make it happen,” as well as its current juxtaposition with the development of “Madden NFL 25.” ”
