CNN Original Series Reunites with Playtone's Tom Hanks And Gary Goetzman to Relaunch the Decades Series with "Decades In Sports"

NEW YORK - (May 14, 2025) - CNN announced today that CNN Originals will reteam with executive producers Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog for a new installment in their Emmy(R) Award-nominated "Decades Series" in Decades In Sports. The CNN Original Series will premiere in 2026.

Decades in Sports is a continuation of CNN Original Series' storied partnership with PlayTone which includes over eight seasons and over 70 hours of television, including The Sixties, 1968: The Year That Changed America, The Seventies, The Eighties, The Nineties, The 2000s, The 2010s, The Movies and Tis the Season: Holidays on Film.

"Tom, Mark and I are delighted to be working with Amy Entelis again. We've always felt great support and creative freedom from her and her team at CNN Originals," said Gary Goetzman.

No single sport, season, game or player can adequately capture why athletic competition at the highest level is so wildly compelling. But taken as a whole, this six-part series will unravel the thrill of the victory and the agony of defeat across six decades of larger-than-life athletes, intense rivalries and stunning upsets that encapsulate the command sports have on our cultural attention.

"Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog have created many iconic series for CNN, and our audiences have shown a continuing interest in unpacking and reliving the nostalgia around specific cultural moments," said Amy Entelis, executive vice president of talent, CNN Originals and creative development for CNN Worldwide. "We are excited to revitalize this CNN Original Series mainstay through the lens of sports, which command such intense and widespread fandom."

Executive producers for Decades in Sports are Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, and Mark Herzog; Amy Entelis and Lyle Gamm will Executive Produce for CNN Original Series.

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About CNN Originals

The CNN Originals group develops, produces and acquires original, long-form unscripted programming for CNN Worldwide. Amy Entelis, executive vice president of talent, CNN Originals and creative development, oversees the award-winning CNN Originals portfolio that includes the following premium content brands: CNN Original Series, CNN Films, CNN Presents, and the newly formed CNN Studios, an internal production studio which creates long-form programming for CNN's global platforms. Since 2012, the team has overseen and executive produced more than 45 multi-part documentary series and 60 feature-length documentary films, earning more than 110 awards and 445 nominations for the cable network, including CNN Films' first Academy Award(R) for Navalny. Acclaimed titles include the Peabody Award winning and 13-time Emmy(R) Award-winning Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown; five time Emmy(R) nominee, Apollo 11, directed by Todd Douglas Miller; Emmy(R) nominated Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico; the Emmy(R) Award-nominated "Decades Series": The Sixties, The Seventies, The Eighties, The Nineties, The 2000s, and The 2010s, executive produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman; The Last Movie Stars, directed by Ethan Hawke about the lives and careers of actors and humanitarians Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman; Grammy(R) Award nominee Little Richard: I Am Everything, directed by Lisa Cortés; The Many Lives of Martha Stewart; This is Life with Lisa Ling; Primetime Emmy(R) and duPont-Columbia Award-winning, RBG, directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen; See It Loud: The History of Black Television, executive produced by LeBron James and Maverick Carter; Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight in partnership with the BBC; the Producers Guild Award and three-time Emmy(R) Award-winning Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy; BAFTA nominee and Directors Guild Award winner, Three Identical Strangers, directed by Tim Wardle; and the five-time Emmy(R) Award-winning United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell; and the five-time Emmy(R) Award-winning The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper. CNN Originals can be seen on CNN, the CNN Original Hub on Max and discovery+, and for pay TV subscription via CNN.com, CNN apps and cable operator platforms.

About PlayTone

PLAYTONE is Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman's film and television production company. Television credits include Masters of the Air for Apple TV+, the Emmy-winning HBO movie Game Change, Emmy-winning HBO limited series' Olive Kitteridge, The Pacific, John Adams, and Band of Brothers, Emmy-nominated HBO series Big Love, Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman show Notes From The Field for HBO, television special event The Concert for Valor for HBO, the 2012-2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies and The 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert Special for HBO, and CNN docuseries' The Movies, The Sixties, The Seventies, The Eighties, The Nineties, The 2000s, The 2010s, and four-part documentary special 1968.

Upcoming projects include the HBO two-part documentary special Billy Joel: And So It Goes, and Berlin Noir and Greyhound 2 for Apple TV+.

PlayTone's television productions have garnered over 50 Emmy Awards (6 Outstanding Miniseries or Movie), 10 Golden Globe Awards (4 Best Mini Series or Motion Picture Made for Television), and 5 Peabody Awards. Hanks and Goetzman are recipients of the PGA's Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television.

About Mark Herzog

Mark Herzog has partnered with Playtone on numerous productions for the past 30 years including We Stand Alone Together, the HBO Emmy-nominated companion documentary for the multiple Emmy-winning Band of Brothers; The Bloody Hundredth, last year's companion documentary to the Emmy-winning Apple TV+ series, Masters of the Air; Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon, an IMAX 3-D film about the twelve men who walked on the moon; and David McCullough: Painting with Words, the Oscar short-listed documentary short about one of America's premiere historians. Decades of Sports continues their collaboration for CNN following The Sixties, The Seventies, The Eighties, The Nineties, The 2000s, The 2010s, 1968, Tis the Season and the 12-hour documentary series The Movies.