The long-awaited Reggie White 30 for 30, The Minister of Defense, will premiere on ESPN on December 13.
Per a Thursday release from ESPN, the film — announced in May — will also be available to stream on ESPN+ following its premiere.
Here’s a trailer.
Ken Rodgers, who previously directed the 30 for 30s Bullies of Baltimore, The Tuck Rule, and The Two Bills, co-directed the feature along with Courtland Bragg, who directed several episodes of Hard Knocks.
From ESPN’s release, here’s a synopsis of The Minister of Defense, including a previously unseen interview with White two months before his death.
Told in part through never-before-seen footage from a 2004 interview filmed two months before his death, the film chronicles both White’s incredible dominance as one of the best defensive players ever and his spiritual journey as an ordained evangelical minister who questioned his blind faith toward the end of his life.
Along with interviews with teammates from both the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers, the film features Reggie’s son Jeremy who embarks on a journey to understand his father’s life, which ended tragically short at the age of 43. The Minister of Defense is a portrait of a man who constantly strived to “do right” but found that sometimes there is no easy answer as to what “right” means.
After a dry year for the 30 for 30 franchise, ESPN gives viewers an early Christmas gift with two new editions in a week. On Saturday, December 9, the post-Heisman 30 for 30 returns with The Great Heisman Race of 1997. Before that film’s debut, the last 30 for 30 to premiere was the four-part Bill Walton feature The Luckiest Guy in the World back in June. Aside from that, we got Bullies of Baltimore in February and the two-part The American Gladiators Documentary in May, which premiered a week before the Walton doc.
The Minister of Defense premieres on Wednesday, December 13, on ESPN at 9 p.m. ET.
[ESPN]
