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While audiences enjoy Episodes 7 and 8 of “The Last Dance” this Sunday (May 10), the project's director Jason Hehir will be putting the finishing touches on his epic 10-part docu-series.
According to Arash Markazi of the Los Angeles Times, when the network decided to bump up the airing of “The Last Dance” after live sports went on hold, Hehir's team was far from finishing the documentary.
Hehir had been scheduled to travel to Spokane, Washington on March 10 to interview John Stockton, but ESPN canceled the trip at the last minute due to coronavirus concerns.
“We would not have been able to finish if I was stuck in Spokane for an extended period of time,” Hehir said.
Originally, “The Last Dance” was slated to air on June 2, two days before Game 1 of the NBA Finals. The NBA's hiatus immediately offered a prime new window for the doc, as long as Hehir and his team could finish the project across five different apartments, via Zoom and Vimeo.
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“Hehir was already stressed about finishing the documentary in time for the original air date. The first three episodes were complete and seven of the 10 episodes were in various levels of post-production when all non-essential business in New York was shut down on March 16,” writes Markazi.
Despite the challenging circumstances, Hehir felt he could finish the doc by mid-May, enabling the network to officially move the date. However, as Markazi notes, this process is different from the usual practice of having the whole series completed before airing.
Episode 10 of “The Last Dance” is expected to be finished by May 10.
ESPN's programming decision seems to be the right one. The first four episodes averaged six million viewers, has been viewed in 190 countries via Netflix, and has dominated sports discourse since premiering.
