A s they prepare for the CBC premiere of their documentary Offside: The Harold Ballard Story, Michael Geddes and Jason Priestley are developing a scripted limited drama about the late, infamous Toronto Maple Leafs owner.

Produced by Geddes’ Toronto-based Lone Eagle Entertainment, the feature doc made its world premiere last weekend at the Whistler Film Festival (WFF) in B.C. and will stream through WFF from Dec. 16 to Jan. 2 before premiering on CBC and CBC Gem on Jan. 22.

Geddes (pictured left) and Priestley (pictured right) tell Playback Daily the project originally started as a dramatic story, but as they started looking into Ballard’s life, they realized no one had done a feature-length deep dive into him as a doc and decided to pursue that avenue first. Now, the doc is serving as “a great research tool” as they work on a scripted version written by Chuck Tatham (Arrested Development, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family).

“Our strategy is — and we’re just taking it out once this doc launches — to do a four-by-one-hour approach to this. There’s more than enough content to carry four [episodes],” says Geddes, citing Ballard’s long history with the Leafs.

“The plan is to take it out with the sales tool of the documentary. We’ve got to attach stars and look to get it into the marketplace. With four [hour-long episodes], there are more places to take it and that’s what people want. They don’t want one-offs.”

Geddes executive produced and Priestley directed Offside: The Harold Ballard Story, which features scores of stars from the hockey world as it runs down the rise and fall of the bombastic Ballard, who died in 1990 and was a polarizing figure, putting profits ahead of the team’s best interests.

Priestley is also an executive producer on the doc, alongside producer Rachel Horvath, and executive producers Tatham, Kevin Kimsa and Mark Slone. Gravitas Ventures has U.S. distribution rights while Toronto’s Photon Films is the Canadian distributor.

Geddes says CBC came on board originally at the scripted development stage of a one-off television movie before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the project turned into a doc. Lone Eagle put some of its own money into the doc, which is produced with the assistance of the Canada Media Fund and CAVCO, and with the participation of the Rogers Documentary Fund and Ontario Creates Film Fund.

Priestley (Barenaked in America, Cas & Dylan, Private Eyes) directed the production during COVID lockdowns and had to initially quarantine in Toronto, where he conducted most of the interviews. He also did interviews in Washington, D.C. and Calgary.

“I wanted to know what drove him,” he says, calling Ballard “a walking contradiction” and a “scoundrel” who also showed a soft side with his philanthropy. “Was it just greed, was it was he a con man, was it just because his ego was so blown out of control?”

CBC, NHL and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment provided archival footage.

“It’s always hard to get the NHL onside with anything,” says Priestley. “I’ve had to deal with them on a couple of other projects. They’re a huge entity, and anytime you get a huge entity like that with teams of lawyers, they’re always worried about a liability over here and a liability over there, and ‘How’s it going to affect this, and how’s it going to make us look?’ They’re incredibly defensive all the time, and so it’s very hard to get them onside with any project. The fact that we were able to get their blessing and have access to some of their archival footage was remarkable.”

Lone Eagle Entertainment plans to produce the scripted version of Ballard’s story with Priestley as director and an executive producer. Geddes says there’s precedent for putting out a doc before a scripted series, such as The Staircase doc that inspired the recent Netflix series of the same name.

“We’re going to get it made, come hell or high water,” says Geddes. “It’s got to be told, we just don’t know who yet.”

Offside is Lone Eagle Entertainment’s first feature documentary after decades of producing high-concept television and formats, such as You Gotta Eat Here! and Big Food Bucket List on Food Network Canada, and the comedy panel show Too Much Information for Super Channel.

Geddes says he now has other feature docs “in the queue” and wants to build a slate of them, with a goal of being “entertaining, informative, enlightening, funny in a way and tragic in a way.”

“Fascinating people get me really excited,” he says.