Why former NFL player Andre Rison went from the field to film

Andre Rison is ready to tell his story

By Malik Brown
Nov 28, 2023
3:57 pm

Former NFL player Andre Rison is looking to tell the world his story from his perspective. In the film Wide Open: The Andre Rison Story, the ex-wide receiver shows the hard work and dedication it took for him to get to the league and establish rapport with players such as Deion Sanders. He also expounds on his experience of building relationships outside of football as he did with the late Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. Rison spoke with rolling out about the film and what viewers should expect.

Where were you when you conceived the idea for this film?

I used to joke with the media all the time after the game or after practice. Maybe something happened in the limelight here and there, and I would always tease them and say. “Hey, it’s in the book” or “It’s in the movie,” and I felt like my life was always a movie being written.

I felt like everybody had their own story and a story to tell. For years everybody would say “Andre, you need to put a movie out. You’ve lived the life to do a movie.”

I’m still pretty young here and I want to live out some more life, and there are still some more goals I want to achieve and accomplish. I want to be at a point in my life where I could say, “Go ahead and tell the story.”

There are also some more in the works because we were talking about possibly coming out with a series because there were so many incidents – great incidents and positive incidents – and everybody likes to point the finger and poke the bear, and that’s negative media.

There were so many great moments throughout my career, on and off the field, and a lot of intricate people, a lot of characters, a lot of funny characters, and I believe this world will have a great time and adapt to these characters as well.

Why was now a good time for you to release this film?

Definitely where I’m at, spiritually. I’ve always been a man of the Lord, and nobody’s perfect. When you get your feet on solid ground, that’s when you make the move. You don’t like to make moves in life with your feet off the ground.

If you stick to that Richter scale, especially being in this new cancel society, internet society, and social media society, it’s a catch-22 to it. You can actually rebuild, you can narrate, you can do a lot of things to your character that has been narrated, or your image that’s been put out there and portrayed.

I just thought this was a great time and avenue to take advantage of the availabilities of marketing, to be able to cut costs, and being able to push a button that millions of people can see, as opposed to having to physically get in front of a million people like we had to do in the’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.