Houston Rockets point guard Jeremy Lin came out of nowhere when he was playing for the New York Knicks and took the NBA by storm and after becoming a global icon for his Chinese background, the star is getting the Hollywood treatment, as a documentary about him and his career titled "Linsanity" now has an October 4 release date.
The film, directed by Evan Jackson Leong, will be distributed by Ketchup Entertainment, according to Variety.com and the film will detail his life, childhood, playing career, college career as well as his time with the Knicks. The film originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and was played at South by Southwest in March and now it has an official release date in October and will be shown in about 20 cities, including in New York and LA.
Lin is from California originally and played basketball at Harvard in college before becoming a household name with the Knicks during a magical run in February of last year and then he signed a three-year deal with the Houston Rockets. The film follows Lin during his life in Palo Alto to Harvard and then to New York City and the film was financed by 408 Films and has received positive reviews so far from critics.
Lin had an amazing run in New York last year before leaving, coming up during a tough time when Carmelo Anthony was hurt to give the Knicks a bolt after scoring 20 points or more in nine of 10 games for the Knicks and one of his biggest nights was dropping 38 points against the Lakers and Kobe Bryant. Soon after, he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated (twice) and after sleeping on his teammates couch, he added 25 points, seven assists and five rebounds, which were all career highs at the time against the Nets and then eventually he was injured and became a free agent, signing a deal with the Rockets.
Lin struggled early with the Rockets, but playing with James Harden helped and he averaged 13.4 points and 6.1 assists for the team and also improved his turnover ratio and three point shooting. The team now has Dwight Howard and looks very strong after being the top scoring team in the league last year and after going 45-37 and making it into the playoffs in the eighth spot, the team is expecting to contend for a championship and the defense of allowing over 100 points per game should get better with Howard.
Justin Chang of Variety reviewed the film saying: "An example of long-term documentary filmmaking paying off in ways few could have anticipated, 'Linsanity' energetically recounts Jeremy Lin's astonishing rise to NBA stardom."
