The 2020s are the decade of pickleball. Although the sport was invented in 1965, this paddle-based middle ground between ping-pong and tennis surged in popularity in the aftermath of the pandemic, becoming the fastest-growing sport in America from 2021 through 2024 and attracting a lot of celebrity attention, from LeBron James to Stephen Colbert and, in one instance, the casts of Priscilla and What We Do in the Shadows in a surprising rivalry. It was only a matter of time until someone made a movie based on the sport; the ones to ultimately answer the call were Josh Greenbaum, Sean Clements, and New Girl star Jake Johnson, with their new Apple TV film, The Dink. As part of Collider’s Exclusive Summer Preview event, we’re excited to share a new sneak peek from the film, as well as conversations with the director and writer, breaking down how this project came together from a personal and professional perspective.
In The Dink, Johnson plays Dusty Boyd, a former hotshot tennis prodigy who’s been reduced to coaching kids at his father’s country club and carrying on his dad’s vendetta against the hot new sport everyone’s flocking to. When he re-aggravates an old injury, however, desperate times call for desperate measures, and he resorts to giving pickleball a try for rehab purposes. Our footage picks up shortly after he picks up the game and partners up with the enchanting Candace (Mary Steenburgen). What Dusty doesn’t realize is that, although he was a tennis pro and he’s been giving lessons, he knows nothing about how pickleball works. That comes back to bite him when he blows off Candace’s advice, forgetting and then completely failing to serve underhand, swinging too hard, and putting not just his foot, but his whole body in the kitchen. If he wants to match up with the old ladies of the pickleball court, he’s going to have to keep his ego in check and actually approach the game on its own terms instead of flailing embarrassingly and flexing his hammer tattoo.
Over time, though, Dusty will grow to appreciate pickleball for what it is like so many others have. This new sport will tear him between two worlds and challenge his identity, and give him a shot at athletic redemption. While The Dink has all the hallmarks of a typical sports redemption story a la Happy Gilmore, it comes from a very real place for Clements. Speaking to Collider’s Maggie Lovitt, the writer recalled his own pickleball origin story, which shares a lot of similarities to what Dusty goes through in the film.
“So, I grew up playing tennis, like very competitively, and it was a big part of my life all the way through high school. And then, I had stopped for a long time, and I picked it back up in LA, and was, whatever, had a couple nagging injuries coming up. My mom kept telling me to try pickleball, and I sort of looked down on pickleball and thought it was too silly, and I wasn’t gonna do it. And some friends invited me out to play, and I had a great time. And then, I had a bunch of free time, I had a little bit of a slow time at work, and I couldn’t get a game together, so I started going to the open mixers in Beverly Hills. Those groups were a lot of retirees and older people, and they treated me like I was a really incredible athlete, which felt great, and then, there was sort of a core group of women there who started inviting me to play before the mixer started, and inviting me out for coffee and bagels or whatever. “
‘The Dink’ Marries Classic Sports Comedy With a Surprising Generational Dynamic
Mixing it up with retirees proved to be the exact spark of inspiration Clements needed to make The Dink. It specifically informed the dynamic between Dusty and Candace, but also, as seen in the sneak peek, how Johnson’s tennis prodigy interacts with his older opponents. “I just felt like it was a really funny dynamic, this group of women my mom’s age who had adopted me as their new pickleball partner, and so that was the seed of it,” the writer said. “I was just like, ‘oh, there’s something funny here about this relationship and this friendship,’ and then from that, I kind of built out the world of what the movie became.”
When asked if there’s a more direct correlation between Candace and the other country club-goers to the people Clements played with, he revealed, “the characters aren’t based directly on those people, but my friend, who invited me to go to those mixers the first time, I did tell him that I was kind of using that as kind of an idea, but no. I haven’t been back to that mixer in a little while, because I’m not able to get there during the day. But I should pass it along.” For Greenbaum, the appeal of his script came not just from that personal angle, but how he took the sports comedy formula and infused it with this commentary about the nature of pickleball’s rise and the competitive wave that followed. “There was a specificity to Sean’s writing that I really loved, but I think just, big picture, it felt like a classic sports comedy, but it was hiding inside this sort of very current, very funny cultural phenomenon, in that pickleball has been exploding,” the director added. “And I think part of what’s so funny about it is how, sort of quickly, something that starts as casual fun, which I have played quite a bit of pickleball, can become deeply competitive and also weirdly emotional.”
Another aspect that drew him in was Dusty’s character arc. Although The Dink is meant to be a very silly film like its inspirations, deep down, the heart of it is about discovering what one’s next phase of life is after a big opportunity has come and gone. Following Dusty as he learns how to adjust to not being the top dog anymore, make new friends, and find a new joy is what Greenbaum ultimately believes will keep viewers invested until the end.
“I felt like that sort of all was encapsulated in his script, but I always, even in the silliest comedies, I want the movie to be about something. So, I think underneath all the ridiculousness and the comedy, the movie is really about reinvention, about ego, certainly about friendship, and I think, really, for Dusty, the main character, it’s about trying to find purpose in a moment in life when maybe you thought your big shot had passed you by, so that combination of everything really just was exciting to me. A world that’s very, very funny, but characters whose stakes I think inside that world feel very real to them.”
‘The Dink’ Was Made for Jake Johnson
It seems like everybody wants Johnson for something nowadays. In 2026 alone, he’s already appeared in The Sun Never Sets, Give It Up, and Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, with upcoming turns in Laika’s Wildwood and a new NBC workplace comedy, Sunset P.I. There’s good reason for that, as he’s always been a charming presence capable of getting laughs and spurring people to root for him, even at his most ridiculous, from New Girl to Minx and the Spider-Verse movies. Both Greenbaum and Clements have worked with Johnson before, the former on New Girl and the latter on the short-lived animated sitcom Allen Gregory, but their connection runs deeper than just being colleagues. In fact, Clements was given special thanks in the credits for the star’s directorial debut, Self Reliance. It’s not a surprise, then, that Clements admittedly wrote The Dink with Johnson’s voice in mind for Dusty.
“Jake and I were friends from… my first real writing job was this animated show in maybe 2010 that Jake was a voice on. And we would always sit next to each other at the table reads, and I would read for the actors who weren’t there, and we would kind of joke around together, and we just stayed in touch over the years. And a lot of times when I sat down to write, I just loved his tone and his comedy, and I think he’s such an appealing actor, and so a lot of times, things that I’ve written, I kind of start a little bit thinking this could be a good character for Jake.”
The Dink really began to take shape once the writer had Johnson in the loop. Although the concept was all Clements’, his star helped shape the comedy of it all once they had a chance to sit down and talk about the project over lunch. “He immediately had some funny pitches for different things that could happen in the movie, and kind of got my wheels turning on turns that could exist, or things that he wanted to do in it, and it kind of helped drive me across the finish line of getting the script done,” he added. That’s when Clements got Ben Stiller involved. The two had previously collaborated on commercials and other projects before the Zoolander star came aboard the Apple TV movie as a producer. Not only did he like what he read, but he also approved of Johnson as the star. “And when he asked who I was kind of picturing as the lead, I said, ‘Jake Johnson,’ and he was like, ‘I love Jake Johnson, let’s do it,’ and we sent it to him first, and he agreed to do it, and it was really much easier than this kind of process usually is, and really great.”
As for Greenbaum, the love for Johnson similarly runs deep. “Jake and I have a long-standing relationship, both professionally and as friends, and just both love to hang with him, but also love to work with him,” the director added, noting how the actor brought The Dink to his attention. “He’s just such a talented guy, and so this was with him even before I came on board. He actually called me and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this project where I think I’m going to play a washed-up tennis pro and thought you might be perfect to work on it together.'” However, he couldn’t ignore the rest of the cast that kept lining up for the pickleball pic.
The Oscar-winning Steenburgen, recently seen in Season 2 of Netflix’s acclaimed A Man on the Inside, plays the perfect partner for Johnson, while Ed Harris plays his strict father, whom he’s trying to earn the approval of. Also on board are Chloe Fineman, Christine Taylor, Patton Oswalt, Martin Kove, Aaron Chen, and not one, but two tennis legends in Andy Roddick, who acts as Dusty’s childhood nemesis, and John McEnroe, among others. It was one thing to have all this talent on board, but they exceeded even Greenbaum’s wildest expectations when brought together. He told Collider:
“So Jake came with a package, which was also a big selling point, along with Sean’s fantastic script, but you know, the rest of the cast, it was, you know, I could, I sort of pinched myself every time someone new would say yes, from Mary Steenburgen to Ed Harris, and then you know we did audition some other people, and had some ideas of a guy named Aaron Chen, who was just incredibly funny, you’ll see in this movie, really funny stand-up and comic actor from Australia. And Lynne Marie Stewart, and we had a lot of just really, really talented people, and even people like Andy Roddick, who obviously is a professional tennis player, came on and just crushed it in terms of acting, which was really fun to see. So it’s an incredible ensemble, and one of my great pleasures in making this was we built an ensemble where everyone has this sort of distinct comic voice, and I think in a movie like this, you want the feeling that every character could walk off-screen and have their own bizarre, fully formed life outside of the story we’re telling. I think we were able to do that with the incredible cast we had.”
Harris, in particular, was a pivotal casting for The Dink, according to Clements. The four-time Oscar nominee is capable of commanding a room, whether as the creator and director of the titular Truman Show or as flight director Gene Kranz in Apollo 13. He was one of the first stars brought aboard in what the writer described as a “real thrill” that changed how Dusty’s father was written. “I think that I had written that character maybe as a little more of an archetypal country club, just fancy tennis guy, and that, Ed doing it… We did end up adjusting more towards him because, especially the juxtaposition between him and Jake, where Jake has this really easy kind of slacker charm, and he’s a little bit disheveled, and then Ed being so precise, and having this kind of military feeling to him.” They brought elements of his past performances into the sports comedy to add the perfect, deathly serious antagonist, ready to stand in the way of Dusty’s new passion.
“We looked at the speeches he had about pickleball being the disintegration of society, and really dug into that more, like, ‘Oh, this, for him is, like, his Apollo 13 failure is not an option speech.’ The fact that this guy has this gravitas and has this seriousness to him is such an asset to the movie, and provides such a great, immediate conflict with Jake. You just kind of can see their whole life together, of him wishing his son was more like him, and it just made that relationship really clear. And so, yeah, that was something where having the actor made it so much more specific, and I think really better for the comedy and for the movie.”
Making ‘The Dink’ Was a Satisfying Challenge for Greenbaum and Clements
This whole process of making The Dink with people he really adores has “been kind of a dream” for Clements. He’ll always be appreciative of his time on television, with series like Workaholics and Kevin Can F**k Himself, and the “collaboration” birthed from a writer’s room of differing minds, but he admits “to do something where, start to finish, it felt like mine, and my voice and tone and input for the whole launch of it was very rewarding and very satisfying.” It’s rare to see both your own idea come to life and to have some of your best friends helping to make it a reality, so he relished the opportunity, in case there’s never another project quite like it with so much buy-in.
“Obviously, Josh came in and had great ideas and made it even better, and Jake and Ben and everyone, so it was still, in a lot of ways, a group project. But just getting the world built and the template for it set on my own felt really good, and I like doing both, but I was very fortunate. I don’t think that most people, especially most writers in film, get to feel as involved as they did, but because Jake and I were friends, and I knew Ben, and because Josh was so welcoming, and wanted me to be on set every day, giving my input as they, whatever, if we had to make a change to a scene to ask me how I thought we could adjust it. It was a really, really, really, wonderful experience for me, and it makes me want to do more movies, although I doubt that they will be as fun as this one was.”
That’s not to say there weren’t challenges to overcome. Namely, Greenbaum had to solve the problem of capturing the pickleball gameplay itself. “It’s sort of like anytime you’re, as a director, you’re shooting either an action sequence or a dance sequence, like choreography, or in this case, a sports sequence, it takes an incredible amount of planning and thinking ahead, and obviously some training as well,” he told Lovitt. “I wanted to make sure all my actors, primarily Jake Johnson and Mary Steenburgen, who were the ones who played the most pickleball in the movie, got their proper training, and I can tell you, they did amazing. I had doubles, but in fact, I used them, my principal actors for most of the scenes, which I’m proud to say for them, but yeah, it’s always challenging.”
Even if Johnson and Steenburgen were pickleball pros by the end of production, there’s a level of unpredictability with a sport like that. There’s no easy way to ensure that the ball will bounce the exact right way or that the cast can hit the right beats when a game starts heating up. Yet, the thrill of not knowing exactly how things would play out made it all the more exciting for Greenbaum. It allowed for some more organic storytelling moments, mimicking the kind of storylines that unfold in real sports matches.
“I think you catch those moments, and a lot of the time, I have a documentary background as well, and I would lean into that and say, okay, let’s just set up a world and set up a few cameras and just let them play. And yes, there’s story beats we need to hit within the story of a pickleball match, but I’m so open to finding those moments where you couldn’t plan it, and someone either hits an incredible shot or slips and falls or is frustrated and throws their racket, and it’s all real. So I try to set up an environment like that, but I think that’s the exciting part of filming something like a sports film like this.”
Heading into The Dink, Greenbaum had already “dipped my toe into the pickleball court” thanks to friends, his wife, and his daughters, but making an entire film about it was a different beast. Having some understanding of why it’s so popular helped him capture it, though. “It’s a very fun game, I think, because, first of all, it’s incredibly social, and it’s actually nice that it’s something you can pick up quickly, and at least be kind of capable at,” he said. “I sort of describe it as feeling like you’re playing ping-pong, but you’re standing on the ping-pong table. It’s like a very large table, and it’s something I think a lot of people can play, and actually, that’s what I like about it.” Easy to learn doesn’t mean it’s not hard to master, though, and the director worked with a lot of experts to show the game both at its simplest and its most complex.
“I think that’s partially what Ed Harris’s character in our film hates about it, is that it doesn’t take nearly as much discipline, but I think the truth is to become really good at it, just like what it takes to become really good at anything, is a lot of hard work, and so it was a little combo of both. I mean, once we started making the film, I obviously really immersed myself. We surrounded ourselves with some incredible professionals who are consultants on the film, who also sometimes were our stunt doubles, our pickleball playing doubles, and it’s just, yeah, it’s a really, really fun sport to just pick up and go play with friends.”
Greenbaum Wanted to Make ‘The Dink’ a Place for Actors to Run Wild
Bringing experience from helming Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and the bonkers R-rated talking dog comedy Strays, Greenbaum knows how to have some fun with his films. “I try to always foster a very fun, very creative set,” he assured. “The best compliment I can get is when the actors feel like it didn’t feel like work at all. It felt like play.” The Dink certainly had that vibe, he says, especially thanks to the cast and team involved and the aforementioned pre-existing bonds. With so many unique comedic and dramatic talents involved, he wanted to give everyone license to run wild with the material that Clements had given them. Often, the final result was better than either the writer or the director started with, and it made the movie feel more like a group project.
“It felt like when they were either little kids or in high school, in the theater group, or in comedy, and they’re in their improv troupe. You really want to try to create an environment where people feel safe to fail and feel safe to try crazy ideas, and so every day was like that. When you have obviously guys like Jake Johnson and Aaron Chen and Patton Oswalt, who comes in and and plays a great role, it’s like you want to let those guys really take big swings, because they will do something much funnier than you could ever imagine, or maybe was even written in the script. So it was a great combination. I mean, we had a great starting point with Sean’s very, very funny script, but absolutely every day we would open it up for improv and ideas, either that I threw out or Sean threw out, or the actors had, and that is the joy.”
Moreover, Greenbaum believes improv is another way to get the cast bought in. “I think even beyond just the comedy, I’m a big fan of improv, because I think it breathes life into something. When an actor doesn’t know what their scene partner is going to do, it makes them listen a little harder, it makes them lean in and kind of be present in the moment.” It ended up being “a big part of making this film,” in some ways harkening back to Clements’ experience working in a television writers’ room after all. So many minds came together to make The Dink something more than the typical sports film, but a meticulously crafted comedy with heart, personality, and a lot of laughs.
The Dink takes the court on Apple TV on July 24. Check out our exclusive sneak peek above and stay tuned here at Collider throughout the rest of the week for more on the hottest new movies from our summer preview series.
