Birmingham Bulls host premiere of Back to Birmingham docuseries at Lyric Theatre

Published 4:58 pm Monday, October 14, 2024

By Andrew Simonson

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By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

BIRMINGHAM – A week before the start of the 2024-25 season, the Birmingham Bulls reflected on the 2023-24 season with their silver-screen debut.

The Birmingham Bulls hosted a world premiere screening for the first episode of the Back to Birmingham docuseries on Friday, Oct. 11 at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Birmingham in an event which was open to the public.

Bulls executive vice president David Koonce said the event brought together many different parts of the Bulls fanbase for a unique event in a historical setting.

“I think the event was a success,” Bulls executive vice president David Koonce said. “We had a ton of people in there. We had people that were fans, we had some sponsors of the team and then we had people that would go see the team back in the 90s and the 70s and we’d see them every once in a while like during a game during the season. But it seemed like a lot of people that had interest in the team really showed up and wanted to see what it was all about.”

The event featured remarks from the film’s production team ahead of the screening and also had a red carpet for the players, the team and the producers.

The team initially considered premiering the documentary in Pelham near its home arena, but instead, it sought to use downtown Birmingham’s historic theater district as the backdrop for an even bigger event to celebrate its release.

That’s when the Bulls approached the Lyric Theatre about hosting the event. While the team needed to postpone the initial screening date of Aug. 16 to give the production team more time finish the series, it found a new date that worked with the Lyric, and the event went on successfully.

“We were trying to find something that was a decent size, but not too big,” Koonce said. “We thought the Alabama Theatre was a little too big for what we were trying to do, and the Lyric just made a lot of sense. We wanted to do it downtown. We wanted to have Birmingham as the skyline for the premiere, because when we did the red carpet, it was just a really cool area, and that’s such a cool venue.”

Back to Birmingham is a three-episode docuseries from Eleven Productions is centered around the Birmingham Bulls’ 2023-24 season and also takes a look back at the team’s history across its multiple iterations dating back to 1976.

The first episode that was screened for fans during the premiere started with recounting the 2023 SPHL President’s Cup Finals, where the Bulls lost the decisive Game Five to the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs, before going into the start of the 2023-24 season.

The series uses around 300 hours of footage both from the team’s historical archives and an Eleven Productions camera crew which followed the team throughout last season, during which the team won the SPHL regular season championship.

Koonce said that the production team took inspiration from the FX docuseries Welcome to Wrexham, which documents the journey of Welsh soccer club Wrexham AFC after actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds purchase it, and wanted to do something similar with the Bulls.

Like Welcome to Wrexham, Back to Birmingham spotlights the communities of Birmingham and Pelham as well as the history of the team.

The production crew took special interest in the team’s history, which is something that Koonce believes is key to showcase.

“I think it’s important that we show the history of this team,” Koonce said. “Believe it or not, a lot of people just aren’t aware of it. A lot of people know that we had a team in the 90s, but not too many people know that we had a team from 1976 to 1981 and had some really big players that played on that team. So, a piece of that is to just show, ‘How did we get here, and where did it come from?’”

While the Bulls are not involved in the production or distribution of the show, the team fully supports the series and hopes that it will help more people learn about who they are and start coming to games.

Koonce said it was a no-brainer for the Bulls to allow Eleven Productions to film if the show can share the team’s brand beyond the Birmingham area.

“To us, all we have to do is to show up to work and do what we do, and we just have to ignore the camera guys that are around us, and hopefully it takes us outside the borders of Alabama to the rest of the world,” Koonce said.

“Back to Birmingham” was initially set to air on the free streaming platform Saucer, but the company backed out as the primary producer and distributor over the summer.

Eleven Productions took over as the sole producer of the show and already began filming at the Bulls’ training camp for season two, which will follow the upcoming 2024-25 season that starts on Friday, Oct. 18.

Eleven Productions is currently shopping “Back to Birmingham” to major streaming platforms. The Bulls do not currently have details on when and where the series will be available to stream, but the team will announce more details when they are confirmed.

A trailer for “Back to Birmingham” is available on Youtube.com/watch?v=VEeQQNOETUQ .

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