The Mascot, a scripted film featuring LSU and Mike the Tiger, will be shooting during Saturday’s home football game against the University of Tennessee, the writer/director says.
The family-friendly sports comedy will tell the story of a blue-chip high school quarterback who loses his LSU football scholarship and seeks redemption by becoming the mascot.
While LSU is often a shooting location for movies, it is never identified by name in the fictional world of the film. In The Mascot, the university would play itself for the first time.
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Casey Cott, best known for his role in The CW Network’s Riverdale, is set to star, but he won’t be in the Mike the Tiger costume on Saturday. Director Matthew Perkins will be on the sideline with a very small crew, getting in-game footage that will complement the scripted work in the final film.
The fans will play a role, so to speak, by just doing what they do naturally.
“I’m excited for everyone to come out and be in their purple and gold cheering their hearts out,” Perkins says. “We’ll see that [in the film] as sort of the bubble that Mike’s in.”
Perkins also plans to shoot elsewhere around campus, and he expects to incorporate current student-athletes, who can be paid without putting their eligibility at risk through name, image and likeness, or NIL, deals.
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The casting and distribution plans are still a work in progress. Perkins wants to get his film in front of as many eyeballs as possible, which could include a theater run followed by at-home streaming.
LSU is never the setting of the major movies that have been shot there. For example, in Pitch Perfect, it stands in for the fictional Barden University. Even in Everybody’s All-American, which filmed scenes at halftime of the LSU-Alabama game, the school was called the “University of Louisiana.”
This story originally appeared in an Oct. 6 issue of Daily Report. To keep up with Baton Rouge business and politics, subscribe to the free Daily Report e-newsletter here.