Formulaic sports movies are simply wonderful things.

The ones with a down-and-out divorced-and-retired coach who has long since given up, the ones with underdog players working their way up, the ones with impossible odds and obstacles, the ones with big pre-game speeches and a huge game swung towards the favor of the underdog team close to the end.

When watching a traditional, formulaic sports movie like this, the viewer knows exactly what they’re going to get out of seeing it. (That’s why people go to see it.)

Sometimes there are variations on the basics, but the core elements are always littered throughout the plot somewhere. 

I’ve seen baseball movies, I’ve seen basketball movies, I’ve seen football movies (played with balls of both shapes), I’ve seen cricket movies, chess movies and lacrosse movies. I’ve seen movies for sports I honestly didn’t even know existed until I saw the movies.

But I haven’t seen a typical bridge sports movie following the same pattern. That’s a little disappointing.

People of Hollywood (and by extension, Netflix, Showmax, Amazon and other streaming services that might be listening): it’s time to talk about a movie featuring bridge. 

One that features every single cliché in the book.

The underdog players, the retired coach, the big speech, the weird venue and the usually inexplicable cast. 

Choose a huge director-producer combination and let’s see where this goes. If it’s directed by Tarantino, then expect to see a lot of violence and several close-up shots of feet; if we pick Michael Bay, we’ve got to be prepared to see a lot of explosions that might not have anything to do with the plot itself. Choose Tim Burton and it might be a gothic musical.

See? We could go anywhere with this.

There might be a murder, there might be heist, there might even be an affair involved. I’m just tossing ideas out there for the next big bridge movie.

The ball’s in your court, movie-creators of the world.