Netflix Is Adapting Phil Knight’s Memoir into a Movie

The streaming service announced last week that it has optioned the rights to the Nike co-founder's bestselling 2016 memoir, "Shoe Dog."

Phil Knight.

Phil Knight's life is coming to Netflix.

The streaming service announced last week that it has optioned the rights to the Nike co-founder's bestselling 2016 memoir, Shoe Dog. The book is being adapted by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the screenwriting team behind the hit FX miniseries The People vs. OJ Simpson. It will be produced by Frank Marshall, whose credits include the Indiana Jones and Jason Bourne series, and who first met Knight during the production of Back to the Future in the 1980s.

Related: Six Takeaways From Phil Knight's Memoir.

"I've always been fascinated by Phil's story and how the company came to be," Marshall said in a press release. "It's an amazing tale about what the path to success really looks like, with its mistakes, struggles, sacrifice and even luck. It's about how a company can grow with the right people, dedication, a belief in the power of sport and a shared mission to build a brand that would change everything."

Knight, 80, co-founded Nike in 1964, known then as Blue Ribbon Sports. After a name change in the '70s, the company went on to become the biggest sneaker brand in the world, with annual sales exceeding $36 billion. Knight, who stepped down as Nike CEO in 2016 and is now "chairman emeritus," grew up in Portland and attended the University of Oregon. The company is headquartered in Beaverton.

Shoe Dog covers Knight's life up to 1980, when Nike made its first public offering. According to our 2016 review, the book includes "some amazingly wild rich-guy prose," "anecdotes of cutthroat international business and scrappy Oregonian entrepreneurialism" and a bit about taking Nike employees on a debauched work retreat referred to as "the Buttface."

Related: Trump Son-in-Law Jared Kushner Spotted with Nike Founder Phil Knight's Memoir.

No word yet on when the film might hit Netflix, or who might play Knight's son, rapper Chilly Tee.

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.