The bitter brotherly feud that sparked the creation of sports-shoe brands Adidas and Puma in the same small German town in the 1940s is to be turned into a television series with the help of family archives, its producers announced yesterday.
Hollywood-based film producer No Fat Ego is backing the project, which has the blessing of the family behind the Adidas empire founded by Adolf “Adi” Dassler.
It would delve into one of the most fascinating fraternal blow-ups in corporate history, which pitted Adi against his brother Rudolf, or “Rudi,” who went on to create rival Puma.
Photo: REUTER
The two men jointly ran a family-owned footwear company before falling out during WWII, with their post-conflict animus splitting their town of Herzogenaurach to this day.
Scriptwriter Mark Williams, behind the hit Netflix series Ozark, has been hired to lead the project and is currently going through Dassler family home videos and memorabilia to work on the story.
“Everybody knows the brands, but the story behind them is something we don’t really fully know,” Williams said at the Cannes film festival.
Photo: REUTERS
One of the most sensitive areas — particularly for the reputations of the multibillion-dollar footwear companies today — would be how the brothers are portrayed during the war period.
Both became members of the Nazi party in the 1930s, as was customary for the business elite at the time. However, Rudi went to fight and was arrested by Allied forces on his return to a defeated Germany.
“Adi stayed home and tried to keep the company alive,” Williams said.
Their factory was seized as part of the war effort and converted into a munitions plant. The series promises to be a “Succession-type drama between the family” set over several generations, Williams explained, comparing it to the earlier hit HBO series.
No Fat Ego founder and chief executive Niels Juul, who has produced Martin Scorsese’s most recent movies, said he was originally drawn to the story after learning about Adidas’ collaboration with legendary black American runner Jesse Owens.
Partly thanks to Adidas’s innovative spiked shoes, Owens became one of the stars of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which Hitler had hoped would showcase white German supremacy.
No Fat Ego intends to develop the series with full editorial independence before offering it to streaming platforms.
“We want to have the creative control, and Mark has to have absolute silence and quiet to do what he does,” Juul said.
Home runs are greeted with a celebratory shot of espresso and the donning of an Armani jacket. Victories are marked with bottles of red wine while the soaring voice of opera singer Andrea Bocelli echoes through the locker room. Welcome to baseball, Italian-style. Written off as 80-1 underdogs before the World Baseball Classic started, Italy’s fairytale tournament has carried them all the way to today’s (Taipei time) semi-finals in Miami against Venezuela. On Saturday, Italy — who scored a stunning upset of a star-studded US lineup during the pool phase — kept their unbeaten campaign alive with a nail-biting 8-6
Jannik Sinner on Sunday beat Daniil Medvedev in the Indian Wells final 7-6 (6), 7-6 (4), winning seven straight points to rally from a 4-0 deficit in the second-set tiebreak and claim the title without dropping a single set. The No. 2-ranked Italian beat Medvedev for the ninth time in their last 10 matches to claim his first title at the California desert tournament. Medvedev handed top-seeded Carlos Alcaraz his first loss of the year in the semi-finals of the BNP Paribas Open. Sinner congratulated fellow Italian Kimi Antonelli, who won Formula One’s Chinese Grand Prix earlier on Sunday. “It
Luka Doncic on Monday scored 36 points as the in-form Los Angeles Lakers powered to their sixth straight victory with a 100-92 defeat of the Houston Rockets. A crucial showdown between the third and fourth-ranked NBA Western Conference teams ended with the Lakers pulling away in the final minute of the fourth quarter to claim an impressive win on the road. The victory gives the Lakers (43-25) a valuable cushion over the Rockets (41-26) as they jostle for post-season positions in the West. Doncic was once again instrumental in dragging the Lakers over the line while a hard-nosed defensive effort
THRILLING GAME: The loaded US roster featuring Paul Skenes, Bryce Harper and Aaron Judge reached their third straight WBC final game, after 2017 and 2023 Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony on Sunday homered, and the US limited the Dominican Republic’s electric offense to win a thrilling semi-final 2-1 and move one win from capturing their second World Baseball Classic (WBC) championship. The loaded US roster led by NL Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes and featuring stars Bryce Harper and Aaron Judge reached their third straight WBC title game after winning in 2017 and falling to Shohei Ohtani and Japan in 2023. The US are to face the winner of this morning’s (Taiwan time) semi-final between Italy and Venezuela a day later. The Dominicans reached
RSS