New ESPN 30 for 30 commercial unveils docs on Bruce Lee, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, Vince Carter, and more

During the College Football Playoff national championship game Monday night, ESPN ran a commercial showing off their upcoming 30 for 30 series documentaries. (They did this during last year’s title game as well; most of the ones spotlighted there have aired, but some are still forthcoming.) And while some of what’s in this year’s commercial was previously known (specifically, the 10-part The Last Dance documentary on the 1990s Chicago Bulls), there were still lots of new 30 for 30 installments spotlighted, including ones on Bruce Lee, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, Vince Carter, and more.

Here’s the ad they ran:

It appears that the Bruce Lee documentary is Be Water, a film directed by Vietnamese-American filmmaker Bao Nguyen that was announced as a 2020 Sundance Film Festival Selection in December.

Here’s more on that from JJ Bona at CityOnFire.com:

Award-winning Vietnamese American filmmaker Bao Nguyen directs this profile of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, who left Hollywood in 1971 dejected, but returned to his parents’ homeland of Hong Kong and made four films that changed the movies forever. The documentary combines rare archival interviews with Lee’s loved ones and his own writings (via SLT).

According to Aaken, Nguyen went to the U.S. and Hong Kong to interview people who have known Lee, including his wife and daughter, Linda and Shannon Lee, as well as his brother and a few of his co-stars.

So that certainly sounds promising. And there are a lot of people out there who would love to see a good documentary on Lee. We’ll see how this one, and the others in this newly-announced series, turn out.

[Matt Clapp on Clippit]