‘Lady Ballers’: Activists not laughing at gender-bending comedy about transgender athletes

The conservative pundits at the Daily Wire predicted that their first feature-length comedy, “Lady Ballers,” would trigger the left, and they weren’t wrong.

Transgender advocates sounded the alarm as the film’s release approached, accusing the movie of seeking to “mock trans women and girls who are fighting for the right to participate in sports as their gender,” as LGBTQ Nation put it.

That, of course, is the point of “Lady Ballers,” the story of a has-been men’s basketball coach who convinces the players on his former high school championship team to identify as female so that they can dominate multiple women’s sports.

Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing, who directed the movie and stars as the coach, dedicated the film to “the women who have trained their entire lives only to be beaten at their sport by a man who couldn’t win at his.”

“The only thing happening in our culture more absurd and hilarious than men calling themselves women and then dominating women’s sports is that the ‘speak truth to power’ set on the left not only won’t make fun of it, they won’t even acknowledge it’s a joke,” Mr. Boreing said in a press release.

The film features a who’s-who of Daily Wire personalities, including Michael Knowles, Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh. Cast as the players are the hosts of “Crain & Co.,” the Daily Wire’s sports show: Jake Crain, Blain Crain and David Cone, as well as comedian Tyler Fischer and newcomer Daniel Considine.

Audiences will also see cameos by Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican; Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon; and Riley Gaines, the University of Kentucky All-American swimmer who famously tied at the 2022 NCAA championships with transgender athlete Lia Thomas.

“Lady Ballers” is slated to be released Friday night exclusively on DailyWire+, the Nashville-based media outlet’s streaming service, mainly because Mr. Boreing said no distributor would touch it.

“This is the religious issue of our time for the left,” Mr. Boreing said on the Patrick Bet-David podcast. “This represents the culmination of their religious beliefs. When we went to the theatrical distributors, it was — [they were] not even going to engage in the conversation. It’s not that they passed.”

That’s too bad, he said, because “right now theaters are in trouble.”

“Disney bombed its box office this weekend. Almost every film has done poorly at the box office with precious few exceptions,” Mr. Boreing said. “But for the right, going to the theater can be an act of protest. Buying a subscription to the Daily Wire is not an act of protest. I think it would do much better at theaters than on our platform.”

Highlighting the absurdity of allowing men into women’s sports through comedy & whats supposed to be satire. This is the way

Sooooo excited for this! Make sure to watch ’LADY BALLERS’ ft me and some of the most influential people in the conservative movement on 12/1 https://t.co/bn362RSat8

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) November 27, 2023

Conservative movie reviewer Christian Toto, host of the Hollywood in Toto podcast, agreed that “no studio, larger or tiny, would dare make a movie like ‘Lady Ballers’ today. Not a chance.”

“The trans debate is the third rail of modern life, but storytellers should be able to explore it like any other issue,” Mr. Toto told The Washington Times.

In other words, times have changed since 2002, when Warner Bros. Pictures released “Juwanna Mann,” a comedy about a pro basketball star who joins the women’s league in disguise after getting booted from his men’s team for bad behavior.

There were no reviews for “Lady Ballers” on Rotten Tomatoes as of Thursday afternoon, but the LGBTQ publication Out magazine declared that the trailer was “the worst thing we’ve ever seen.”

“Based on the trailer, it’s not clear if director and star Jeremy Boreing (co-founder of the Daily Wire) has ever written or acted before, or if he has ever met a woman in real life,” Out reviewer Mey Rude said. “Every joke falls flat, the trailer mocks women athletes, feminists, Dylan Mulvaney, and indigenous people, it claims that being ‘trans-age’ is a thing, and it just makes very little sense overall.”

Mr. Cruz, who attended the movie premiere Wednesday in Nashville, begged to differ, calling the film “funny as hell.”

“The best outrageous comedies, like ‘American Pie’ and ‘Knocked Up,’ often have a sweet emotional center,” Mr. Toto said. “We’ll have to see if ‘Lady Ballers’ does more than ‘own the libs’ on this hot-button issue.”

The $7 million production made in Nashville wrapped up in July despite “protesters rallying on location, bullying and harassing cast and crew as they arrived on set, and successfully pressuring one contracted filming location to cancel,” the release said.

The Daily Wire jumped into the entertainment business to produce content alternatives to the increasingly woke Hollywood offerings, offering pointed political documentaries such as Matt Walsh’s “What is a Woman” as well as traditional features such as “Terror on the Prairie.”