In a competitive situation, Paramount Television Studios and Skydance Sports have landed the spec script “Knockouts” from writers Clara Nevins and Harper Oreck, Variety has learned exclusively.
Per the official logline, the show is “set against the glossy world of SEC sports and Southern sorority life, where four girls in a bottom-tier sorority use their insider knowledge to build an illegal sports betting ring out of their basement.”
Both Nevins and Oreck are executive producers in addition to starring. Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, and James Seidman will executive produce via Temple Hill. Paramount TV Studios and Skydance Sports will co-produce.
Nevins and Oreck graduated from Harvard in 2023, where they originally met and started writing together. Nevins was previously an assistant at Counterpart Studios, while Oreck recently completed a master’s degree in gender studies at the University of Cambridge. They previously worked together on the short film “Tank Top.”
They are repped by UTA and Kaplan Perrone. Temple Hill is repped by UTA.
Sports betting has become the focus of renewed scrutiny in recent years with the launch of numerous betting apps that have given people the ability to wager as much as they want right from their phones. There was a case earlier this year in which a group of gamblers were charged with bribing college basketball players in attempts to affect the outcomes of the NCAA March Madness tournament from 2023-2025. There have also been numerous accusations of anonymous accounts wagering on seemingly insider information in an effort win untold amounts of money.