The team at Words + Pictures was deep into its next documentary, having clocked more than 20 hours of interviews with Hulk Hogan. The story of the controversial wrestling icon wouldn’t be easy to tell, but they were up for the challenge. After all, they had been entrusted by a menagerie of subjects — from the Kansas City Chiefs to the Boston Celtics to the family of the late Christopher Reeve — to record their histories. But everything changed when Hogan died on July 24.

The team was on a Zoom call, strategizing about a different project, when everyone’s phones began lighting up.

“It was a real shock,” says W+P president Libby Geist. “We knew he wasn’t well. We were planning shoots, and he wasn’t getting back to our director, Bryan Storkel.”

Storkel happened to be setting up for interviews at WWE headquarters, so he relayed live updates to the team, then captured the reaction from inside the organization. Such is the job of a documentarian — especially one who had spent more than six months filming Hogan, getting the wrestler to reflect candidly on his life and legacy.

“We had a meeting that afternoon,” Geist recalls, “and I just said, ‘Guys, we have a really special legacy story to tell now. We need to embrace that this is more important than it was yesterday. And everybody takes that seriously.”

Indeed, trust-building has been crucial to the success of the nascent production company, which was founded in 2021 and is recognized as the pinnacle of premium non-scripted storytelling. “That core relationship between us and the subject is the most important part of any one of these projects,” says founder and CEO Connor Schell.

To be fair, W+P had a bit of a head start on the competition. Schell spent 16 years at ESPN, where he was the sports network’s top content exec; he also co-created the Emmy-winning “30 for 30” documentary franchise and produced the Chicago Bulls miniseries “The Last Dance.” (“’30 for 30’ changed the perspective of what storytelling on ESPN and what storytelling in sports could be,” Schell says. “That it could matter.”) He left ESPN to launch Words + Pictures, which has produced some 30 projects, including the Primetime Emmy-nominated “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,” HBO Max’s “Celtics City,” Netflix’s “Full Speed” with NASCAR and the Chiefs docuseries “The Kingdom,” which debuted Aug. 14 on ESPN.

Words + Pictures’ Connor Schell attends a Kansas City Chiefs game during filming for “The Kingdom” docuseries.

It’s mid July when I sit down with Schell. We’ve huddled in a backstage dressing room at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where Full Day Productions (the company’s live events arm) is preparing for the ESPYs the following evening. On show day, rapper Busta Rhymes will occupy this space, while Schell will be in the wings, watching the show on the monitors.

“What I love about this is, at its heart, this is a storytelling show. The best moments are these mini-documentaries,” Schell says of the ESPYs. “The ability to tell stories in a live moment is really special; there’s this big communal experience going on, and then you can move people or make them laugh. It’s a true continuation of what we want Words + Pictures to be.”

The Dolby was the site of another pivotal event in Schell’s career: In 2017, he was sitting in the audience during the 89th Academy Awards when “O.J.: Made in America” won the Oscar for best documentary feature. Schell was one of the producers of the landmark “30 for 30” documentary event.

“It was surreal,” he says of watching the “once-in-a-lifetime” project recognized on that stage. “It felt like the completion of that 10-year journey. [Bill Simmons, who co-created the series, and I] never imagined that we would ever be involved in the making of a movie that would get you here.”

What was unique about director Ezra Edelman’s nearly eight-hour, five-part film project was the way it expanded the documentary format. “It just became clear that [sports documentaries] didn’t have to fit in a 30- or 60-minute window with a certain number of ad breaks that had to crescendo at the end of an hour. People were starting to hyper-engage with things they were interested in, and you could go deep on them,” he explains.

And the whole experience stoked the fires of Schell’s imagination about what could come next as he aspired to make more projects that could reach similar heights. “It’s a high that you want to chase,” he says. “It sparked the idea that there’s a market for this, and there’s a possibility to figure out how to fit into this part of the industry.”

When Schell left ESPN, he partnered with top media executive Peter Chernin to form Words + Pictures, which was envisioned as a non-scripted studio. It was the perfect opporutnity to create synergy with Chernin Entertainment, the scripted studio behind such films as “Hidden Figures” and “Ford vs. Ferrari.” “Both of those could’ve been “30 for 30″ episodes — an unscripted version would blow your mind,” Schell says. “The types of stories we want to tell are the same, but we do them in different forms, so that felt like a natural partnership.”

Plenty of success followed. For example, “Super/Man,” the first project W+P financed independently, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, then sold to Warner Bros. Discovery for $15 million. (The film is one of five projects W+P has sold for this figure). Then, last August, W+P got a call from the Kansas City Chiefs, which was interested in chronicling its bid for a third consecutive Super Bowl title. Schell was elated; he’s been one of the Chiefs’ faithful since his family moved to the city in 1989.

“If I told 12-year-old me that we were going to be standing on the sidelines, I wouldn’t have ever comprehended that those things were possible,” he says, grinning at his luck.

Moreover, the team’s outreach was proof that Words + Pictures’ reputation — for crafting compelling narratives, but also turning them around quickly — preceded it. (Indeed, inking a deal in August meant a truncated pre-production schedule as the NFL season begins in September.) W+P can “mobilize on a dime,” Schell says, because it has a deep bench of in-house directors and a 40-person staff representing every stage of production.

Kristen Lappas, who helmed the women’s college basketball series “Full Court Press,” was tapped to direct “The Kingdom.” She spent the season tracking stars Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Chris Jones, coach Andy Reid and the Hunt family, which owns the team. (The late Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt coined the term “Super Bowl.”)

Patrick Mahomes sits for an interview for “The Kingdom” docuseries.
Sydney Schneider

“The best sports movies aren’t about sports. Sports just becomes this vehicle in,” Schell says. “It’s the last bastion of communal culture. Rich, poor, Republican, Democrat, man, woman, young, old — we can all be a Chiefs fan. That brings people to the party, so to speak, and then you can go tell them a story.”

“The Kingdom” is unique, Schell explains, because the show is focused on the pursuit of greatness rather than the final score. “Sports culture focuses so much on outcomes — there’s a winner and a loser — but the more I’ve done this, the more you realize that it’s about all the work that you’re doing individually and collectively to try to get to the top.”

Spoiler alert: the Chiefs did not win last year’s Super Bowl, but the cameras captured something more poignant instead. “A day or two later, I got an audio file via text from one of our producers saying, ‘You’ve gotta listen to this,’ and it was Chris Jones giving this unbelievably impassioned speech about how much it hurt [to lose] and how hard everybody had to work to never have that feeling again. It gives me goose bumps,” Schell says. “Being able to show that these guys made that effort and that journey, and that when they don’t get there, it hurts, that was all really satisfying for me, to get a better understanding of their process.”

At its heart, the Words + Pictures team are raconteurs, and their tales go beyond the field of play. Yes, projects about legendary NCAA football coach Nick Saban, the New York Yankees and NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony are in the works. But Schell also confirms that the company is working with the family of the late actor Chadwick Boseman.

These projects represent the type of expansion Schell dreamed of when he formed the company. “I’m never going to stop telling sports stories,” he says, “but finding a firmer footing on telling non-sports stories, taking all of the skill sets that exist within the unbelievable people we’ve hired — and turning them on to music and politics and popular culture — is a big part of where we want to go.”