ESPN Films announced on Tuesday that Spike Lee will take charge of its upcoming documentary series about Colin Kaepernick. Lee will have access to never-before-seen footage from Kaepernick’s archive.
The director will record additional interviews with the NFL star to create “a full, first-person account of his journey” from childhood in an adoptive white family to athletic stardom to black rights advocacy.
The 34-year-old was born to a white mother from a black father and was put up for adoption, with the Kaepernick family taking him in. They moved to California when Colin was a small child, paving the way to his rise as a promising football player at school and later at college.
He joined the NFL as a quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers, starting in the 2011 season. His career in sports was torpedoed in 2016, after he started kneeling during the playing of the national anthem in a gesture of protest against racial injustice.
Kaepernick’s stance brought him both praise and condemnation and led to the NFL blackballing him. After he sued the league, the grievance was settled out of court.
The path that Kaepernick walked was previously shown in Netflix’s 2021 six-part series ‘Colin in Black and White,’ which he co-created and co-produced with Ava DuVernay.
The ESPN documentary so far has no release date or title.