Football has probably reached the apex of its professional sports dominance in the U.S., so it’s time for an NFL-sanctioned movie!  Tony Krantz (The Big Bang) will produce and direct Week 14, a drama said to be in the vein of Crash.  The script by Ron Shelton (Bull Durham) chronicles “the last three weeks of the NFL’s regular season as seen through the eyes of fictional players, coaches and their significant others.”

Krantz’s production company Flame Ventures will accept studio bids in the coming weeks; sources tell Variety that interest is “already high.”  The NFL is protective of its brand, so the material is PG-13 and targeted toward all four quadrants.  More after the jump.

Writer-director Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham still resonates, twenty-two years after its release, as the baseball movie to hold all others up to.  Veteran Catcher and minor-league veteran Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) finds his contract bought out, placing him with the Durham Bulls.  The Bulls’ star player is Pitcher Ebby Calvin “Nuke” Laloosh (Tim Robbins), an empty-headed hotshot who dreams of nothing more than making it to “the show,” (the major league, in layman’s terms).  And the team’s hope is that Crash will be able to impart some wisdom on Laloosh to better prep him for that career leap.  Meanwhile, a hardball devotee named Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), a local who chooses one player per season as a personal “project”, selects Laloosh as flavor of the season.  But it’s Crash who steals her heart and the movie quickly becomes as much about human emotions as it does baseball.  Continued after the jump:

Billy Bob Thornton is now set to star in “Pound for Pound,” a boxing drama based on a novel from F.X. Toole, the author of the book that became “Million Dollar Baby.”  The film will be written and directed by Ron Shelton (“Tin Cup”, “Bull Durham”) and will begin to film early next year.  To find out more about “Pound for Pound” and why I think this is an odd choice for Shelton click the jump.

The Hollywood Reporter has announced that writer-director Ron Shelton (“Tin Cup”, “Bull Durham”) will be returning to the golf course to direct “Q School”, a comedy starring Tim Allen and Dennis Quaid as a couple of friends competing to get into the PGA Tour.  More info after the jump