She’s bringing joy into our lives – literally – this week with Pixar’s hockey-boasting Inside Out, but Amy Poehler has her comedy eye on another sport, setting up new basketball comedy Balls along with writer/actor Ike Barinholtz{
Poehler will produce and star in the film for Universal, playing a once-promising basketball coach who is down on her luck. She’s surprised, then, when the National Basketball Association asks her to lead a team, largely because it’ll be seen as politically groundbreaking to have a woman in the job. The pressure builds as the reluctant officials monitor her performance and she realises the onus is on her to succeed even more than the men in the sport.
Barinholtz, who will be seen alongside Poehler in the new comedy Sisters (due March 11 next year), is on board to take a role as well as working on the script with writing partner David Stassen. The pair has mostly recently contributed the screenplay for the Dwayne Johnson/Kevin Hart action comedy Central Intelligence and is also in the writers’ room for sitcom The Mindy Project. As an actor, Barinholtz is also attached to Bad Neighbours 2 and has worked on both the Angry Birds ‘toon and David Ayer’s Suicide Squad.
As for Poehler’s work in front of the camera, she’s lined up a role co-starring in The House with Will Ferrell and will be seen as one of the returning veterans for Wet Hot American Summer prequel series First Day Of Camp, which arrives on Netflix on July 31.