Nat Faxon & Jim Rash To Direct Father-Son Racing Pic ‘Team Hoyt’

EXCLUSIVE: Nat Faxon & Jim Rash have been set by Netflix to direct Team Hoyt, based on the true story of how Dick Hoyt turned himself into a triathlete and marathoner so he could lug with him son Rick—a non-verbal quadriplegic whose strength and spirit helped galvanize a movement.

Dick and Rick became an iconic father-son racing team, with Dick pushing and pulling his son through more than a thousand endurance events, including 32 Boston Marathons and six Ironman Triathlons. Off the course, Judy Hoyt carried the baton for inclusive education, playing a pivotal role in drafting Chapter 766—the groundbreaking Massachusetts law that became a model for federal special education legislation.

The film will be produced by Kevin Walsh’s The Walsh Company, Gotham Chopra’s Religion of Sports, Ryan Stowell, and NFL icon Tom Brady, latter of whom hatched Religion of Sports with Chopra and another gridiron great, Michael Strahan. Russell Hoyt will co-produce in collaboration with the Hoyt family estate, honoring Rick and Dick’s legacy in the racing and disabled people’s community. Brady is fully on board, sparking to the inspirational strength of the material and the Hoyt story. Dick’s completely Boston-flavored speaking voice probably also appealed to the New England Patriots legend QB.  

If you have a beating heart, you’d be hard pressed to hold back the waterworks watching footage of the bond that developed between a non-athletic father and his son, a young man robbed of mobility and the ability to speak when his umbilical cord strangled him in the womb. Dick got himself off the couch, worked his way into shape, and found that his son enjoyed being part of the race, where they motivated one another.

The script was written by Grant Thompson (McFarland, USA).

Faxon and Rash most recently directed the dramedy Downhill, starring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. They won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2012 for The Descendants, directed by Alexander Payne and starring George Clooney and Shailene Woodley. 

Walsh (The Instigators), is repped by WME and Johnson, Shapiro, Slewett & Kole. Chopra and Brady’s Religion of Sports, which has done acclaimed docuseries on Aaron Rodgers, Serena Williams, Simone Biles and Kobe Bryant, is repped by WME, as is Brady along with Latham & Watkins. Stowell is Yorn, Levine. Faxon & Rash are repped by CAA, Untitled, and Goodman, Genow, and Thompson by Verve, Underground, and Sloane, Offer.