‘Letterkenny’ Producer On ‘Hate The Player: The Ben Johnson Story’: “What If We Look At This As ‘I Tonya’ Meets ‘Eastbound & Down’”

The 100m final at the 1988 Olympic Games has been dubbed the dirtiest race in history, which may not seem obvious ground for comedy. Yet, New Metric Media has taken on the challenge with Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story. “We’re a comedy company first and foremost with Letterkenny and Shoresy and whatnot,” says New Metric founder Mark Montefiore. Having decided comedy was the way into the story “the initial idea was, what if we look at this as I Tonya meets Eastbound & Down” he adds.

John Wick: Chapter 4 star Shamier Anderson will play Johnson in Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story. Johnson, now 63-years-old, acknowledges he broke the rules, but claims he was scapegoated amid widespread abuse and institutional failings. He tells Deadline the time is right to bring his story to the screen: “Over the years, the media and the government and everybody else has been telling what Ben Johnson did, cheating and taking steroids, and we’re going to flip the coin, turn it around to show what they did to Ben Johnson by letting [me] be seen as the only bad guy and paying the price for everybody else.”

Johnson’s 9.79-second winning time at the Seoul Olympics 100m final set the sporting world alight. His subsequent disqualification, however, tarnished the Olympic Games’ blue riband event and was one of the biggest news stories in the world in the summer of ’88. Amid the fallout, Johnson’s shaming was part of a wider story, with six of the eight 100m finalists going on to test positive for banned substances. The series highlights the absurdities and hypocrisies therein.

Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story is for Paramount+ Canada and specialty channel GameTV and will bow in 2026. New Metric, which produces with Bay Mills Studios, is across distribution. It gave international buyers a sneak peek at the MIPCOM market in Cannes last week.

The series is Johnson’s side of events and the character of his lawyer, played by Mark McKinney, breaks the fourth wall to tell viewers as much. It covers Johnson’s rivalry with Carl Lewis, who is parodied on the show with Andrew Bachelor playing the U.S. track and field star. Johnson said his erstwhile rival asked him to be in I’m Carl Lewis!, a (non-comedic) feature doc about the titular athlete’s career. He passed, but he has been across the scripts for Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story. “It will show me in a different light, and is a different line [showing] what really happened,” Johnson said. “In the media over the years, the they only write one thing, in one way. It sheds a light on my side of the story, so I can tell it the way it is.”

Montefiore was introduced to Johnson by Mary Ormby, the Canadian journalist who has expertly followed the athlete’s story for years and is the writer of ‘World’s Fastest Man: The Incredible Life of Ben Johnson’. “We had a lot of conversations and our plan was to do this as a drama series,” Montefiore said. “The story kept getting more insane and more ridiculous…and it was, like, how does this happen in such a ridiculous way and no-one’s calling bullshit on it?”

BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated writer Anthony Q. Farrell (The Office) came on as writer. “He had a brilliant take, which was taking someone Canada put up on a pedestal and then knocked them down and beat the hell out of them,” Montefiore said. “There are so many groups and organizations that didn’t support Ben when they should have been there.”

Although a comedy rooted in a story from the past, there is a modern-day resonance and a serious message, Montefiore added: “It’s a global story. Ben’s a global icon. The sport is still dealing with the same challenges and it’s not limited to track and field.”