The Secret Kobe Bryant Documentary You May Never See

Kobe Bryant didn’t like what he was seeing. It was the fall of 2019, and the NBA legend was tucked inside an editing bay at an office in Irvine, staring at a roughly assembled two-hour cut drawn from tens of thousands of hours of footage he’d commissioned during the 2015-16 Lakers season — his farewell tour. The material captured everything: the dunks, the jumpers, the no-look passes, yes, but also his life away from the court. Moments in the locker room at Staples Center. Evenings at home with family. And, in several haunting instances, scenes aboard his helicopter.

But the cut didn’t measure up. According to a source present at the screening, Bryant was visibly frustrated. “Kobe was like, ‘Yeah we’re scrapping that and starting over,’” he recalls.

Even so, everyone in that office must have understood the significance of what was being projected on that screen. Its working title was 20th Seasonand it was an intimate record of the final year of one of the greatest athletes in modern history. At a moment when demand for prestige sports documentaries had been booming, it was more than gold — it was a Hope diamond.

Just a few months later, of course, it would become even more valuable. After the tragic helicopter crash that killed Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others, the footage would take on a sacred sheen, transformed into arguably the most precious sports footage in the world.

Indeed, to those few aware of its existence — Bryant’s inner circle as well as a small group of Hollywood insiders — those thousands of hours of footage have become something like a holy shrine to a mythical figure. A slew of prominent producers and directors, including two Oscar winners, have lined up with offers to shape it all into the documentary Bryant once imagined creating for himself.

So far, though, none have signed on. According to the filmmakers and others familiar with the talks, they’ve all run into the same stubborn obstacle: Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s widow, who, it turns out, has her own very specific vision for what sort of movie should be made. And it’s not a film anyone else seems interested in making.

“It’s the white whale,” says one top producer of Bryant’s final footage. “But it can’t hold a director, and it’s been sitting out there with this eternal promise that never seems to materialize.”

***

Bryant’s offices at Granity Studios did not look like what you might expect. There were no jerseys or trophies decorating the walls, or even photographs of other historic sports icons. Instead, there were framed images of Walt Disney, Steve Jobs and John Williams. Bryant placed them there intentionally to signal — to himself and to those around him — that he was pursuing a different kind of greatness.

Bryant’s ambitions were not unusual among sports figures — plenty of athletes have chased Hollywood after retiring — but the scale and seriousness of his pivot were different. He wasn’t looking to do cameos, brand deals or vanity projects. He wanted a second career as a creator and producer, something that could stand on its own apart from basketball. Inside Granity, he treated that goal with the same intensity he once brought to Lakers practices.

He THR‘s Awards Chatter podcast in 2017, Bryant was asked what his life would’ve looked like without basketball. “I’d be writing stories,” he said. “That’s something that’s just part of me and something that I love every bit as much as I have ever loved basketball.”

His first major Hollywood collaboration was Musethe 2015 Showtime doc he made with Gotham Chopra, co-founder of the documentary company Religion of Sports. “Working with Kobe was both exhilarating and exhausting. He was as intense off the court as he was on,” Chopra tells THR. Muse wasn’t just Bryant’s first serious Hollywood project, it was also the beginning of his relationship with Jake Bloch, the young director of photography he later hired to oversee the embedded crew filming his final season.

His next project, the animated short Dear Basketballpushed him further into the creative world he was building — and in a big way, winning a 2018 Academy Award. To Bryant, it was confirmation that the stories he wanted to tell — and the way he wanted to tell them — could resonate beyond the court. From there, he scaled up. He expanded his team at Granity Studios, developing multiple projects. ESPN ran his basketball-analysis series Detail. His scripted children’s podcast, The Punieswas headed toward an animated TV series.

“He was world-building and trying to win the public’s imagination,” says Kevin McCollum, the Tony-winning producer behind In the Heights, Avenue Q and Rent. In 2018, Bryant contacted McCollum about adapting The Wizenard Series: Training Campa children’s book he co-wrote with Wesley King, into a Broadway musical. Bryant even explored working with Harry Potter director Chris Columbus on a film version.

But the most ambitious project on his slate was the 20th Season documentary built from the footage chronicling his final stint with the Lakers. Along with Bloch, Bryant hired Jim Hession, a film editor who would later cut the 2023 Jon Batiste doc American Symphonyand Tony Hardmon, the cinematographer behind 2020’s John Lewis: Good Trouble (both declined comment for this story, citing NDAs, as did numerous others contacted by THR).

Filming was complicated. There were early disputes with the NBA, which enforces strict limits on who can shoot during games. “Kobe didn’t ask for permission — for anything really. He did what he wanted,” says a Lakers source. Eventually, the NBA agreed to an arrangement, granting wide access with one restriction: The crew could not fly on the team plane.

As for what Bryant intended the documentary to be?

“I think the feeling was just shoot everything. Get a million hours of raw footage and then assess what he had and decide what to do,” says the Lakers source.

Another collaborator recalls some uncertainty but notes Bryant was aware that a prestige documentary could bring in revenue to support his expanding creative ventures. Bryant’s appearance in 2019’s The Last Dancethe Emmy-winning Michael Jordan doc series that sold for $20 million and became a global sensation, may have also been an inspiration. Although it wasn’t released until three months after his death, Bryant was likely aware of what a game-changer that series was destined to become.

“Kobe would have wanted to double that [$20 million],” says the Lakers source. “And if The Last Dance won three Emmys, Kobe would’ve wanted him to win five.”

***

When Bryant’s helicopter crashed into a Calabasas hillside on Jan. 26, 2020, the public impact was immediate and overwhelming. Cable networks aired continuous coverage. Thousands gathered at Staples Center to pay tribute. Twenty thousand people attended the official memorial, and millions watched or streamed it online. Murals of Bryant appeared not only across Southern California but around the world — more than 600 in total.

In the years since, it’s been Vanessa, Bryant’s widow, who has become the central figure shaping and protecting his reputation — a new and sadly unexpected role. Throughout most of Bryant’s playing career, and beyond, she had maintained a relatively low profile. “I wasn’t privy to their conversations at home, but she only made a handful of appearances at Granity events,” notes Craig Greiwe, the former chief strategy officer at Rogers & Cowan PMK who oversaw accounts for both Bryant and Granity (and is one of the few collaborators who did not sign an NDA). “Mostly red carpets. And I’ve never once seen her speak publicly in support of any of the work he did after the NBA.”

Today, though, Bryant’s legacy appears to be an all-consuming occupation — and one she has often pursued with an army of lawyers beside her. For starters, she sued Los Angeles County in a US district court after first responders circulated graphic crash-site photos; she ended up being awarded $44 million. In 2021, Vanessa resolved a lawsuit — filed against her in Orange County Superior Court by her own mother — alleging unpaid wages as a nanny and a broken promise of lifetime support. And she prevailed in a legal dispute with Bryant’s former business partner and onetime close friend Molly Carter over profits from his investment in the sports-drink company BodyArmor — a case that made international headlines when texts between Carter and Bryant entered the Orange County Superior Court record, including messages in which Carter referred to Kobe as a “douche nugget” and called Vanessa a “bitch.”

Carter declined comment but according to Greiwe she “was one of the few people in the world who was always fiercely loyal to [Kobe] and to his vision, and that’s why he trusted her,” adding that he believes the released texts were taken out of context. “They were like brother and sister, and sometimes they fought like that. But they had each other’s backs, and there’s no question he trusted Molly to run his empire.” (A spokesperson for Vanessa disputes this characterization, insisting that “it is absolutely not true” that Bryant and Carter were friends).

Adds a veteran sportswriter who covered Bryant: “I always heard that both in their marriage and outside of it he played the good cop and [Vanessa] was the bad cop. People were very wary of Vanessa.”

Today, among those most wary of Vanessa — or, at least, of her creative vision — are the Hollywood directors and producers who’ve approached her about the mountain of priceless footage she now controls. While Bryant’s plans for his documentary may not have been fully formed before his death, hers are now crystal clear. Multiple sources say she wants to turn it into an epic romance, with herself as the central love figure.

“Vanessa knows how she wants it set up,” says one of those sources. “The construction of the film that she wants is a very personal story to her and to her family.”

In all fairness, it’s not an entirely uncompelling narrative. Kobe and Vanessa met on the set of a 1999 rap video. He was 21, already an NBA slam dunk contest winner; she was a 17-year-old high schooler. They became engaged six months later. Throughout the next 20 years, she sat beside him through triumphs and turbulence: his early rivalry with Shaquille O’Neal; the 2003 sexual assault case involving a 19-year-old hotel worker (charges were dropped when the accuser declined to testify, and Bryant later settled a civil suit); his estrangement from his parents, whom he sued in 2013 for auctioning memorabilia without permission (reports have suggested that Bryant’s decision to marry Vanessa contributed to tensions with his family). There were moments s of turbulence in their own marriage — in December of 2011, she filed for divorce, with the couple reconciling in January of 2013 — but the two were clearly devoted to each other.

Still, editing those thousands of hours of priceless footage into a romantic idyll is probably not the movie Bryant imagined making — and it’s certainly not the movie Hollywood wants to make. What’s more, Vanessa’s influence is not limited to the 20th Season footage. Her representatives have also moved to shape — or halt — other nonfiction projects about her husband. One high-profile example: a doc being developed by Thunder Road Films’ Basil Iwanyk and Select Films’ Mark Ciardi, which draws heavily on taped interviews Bryant recorded at 17. When an early version of that film was shopped to buyers last year, interest was strong — until WME, which represents the Bryant estate, privately warned that purchasing it could jeopardize any future chance at accessing the 20th Season material.

“I was told by the agent — and he told the whole town this — that if you buy it, you’ll never get a shot at the project that Kobe shot,” the buyer tells THR.

This sort of strong-arming — or, from Vanessa’s point of view, safeguarding — clearly hasn’t gone over well in Hollywood, where Vanessa has been climbing higher and higher on many filmmakers’ life-is-too-short list. “Why is it that so many people are terrified to talk? I think it’s clear that her actions have spelled the destruction of Kobe’s legacy and his vision, at least the one he articulated to me,” says Greiwe. “All the things that he had planned for are gone.”

A spokesman for the estate says that “Craig Greiwe has never met [Vanessa] Bryant and is making unfounded statements,” adding that Greiwe has previously made “disparaging remarks about Kobe and Vanessa.” The spokesman insists that whatever documentary is ultimately released will be “in line with Kobe’s wishes and intent.”

Of course, as executor of the estate, Vanessa Bryant — who declined to be interviewed for this story — is fully empowered to determine what, if anything, the documentary moves forward — and nobody could blame her if she ended up spiking the entire project. Sifting through hundreds of hours of footage of her late husband surely takes an emotional toll. She declined an interview for this story.

In 2020, Granity Studios shut down, abruptly halting nearly every creative project in development, (although, according to Vanessa’s spokesperson, she kept as many staff members on the payroll as possible during Covid, and fulfilled “Kobe’s projects”). Those offices have since been taken over by a real estate brokerage firm. Former staffers — a publishing department, the development team and young employees who believed they were helping Bryant build something lasting — have scattered across the entertainment industry or left it entirely. The Granity Studios website, which is still accessible, is the only vestige of Bryant’s grand ambitions.

“Kobe knew he had influence, but what he really wanted was to help kids who felt alone and offer them a path,” says McCollum. “Kobe’s legacy is not just the stories but the ideas. If the Bryant family was interested, I would do anything to help get the musical made. It’s still a worthy project. But I don’t want to be presumptuous.”

Little is known about where the thousands of hours of behind-the-scenes footage is stored, or who has access to it. What is clear is that the raw material capturing one of the most enigmatic, driven and influential athletes of modern times possibly sits on a hard drive somewhere, or maybe in the cloud, waiting — perhaps indefinitely — to be unlocked.

Scott Feinberg contributed to this report.

This story appeared in the Dec. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.