‘Office Race’ Producers on How ‘Caddyshack’ and ‘Dodgeball’ Inspired Joel McHale, Beck Bennett-Led Running Comedy

variety.com:

Sophia Scorziello editor If you’ve ever been around a runner or went to high school pretty much anywhere, you’ve probably seen the cross country shirts with the message, “Your team’s punishment is our team’s sport.” It’s not untrue that runners are usually not shy to talk about running, whether they’re asking you to make a donation in support of them running a marathon or trying to get you to come on a run with them in a snow storm because the texture is just better that way.

Yet, aside from films like 2007’s “Run Fatboy Run” starring David Schwimmer, there are no comedies that punch up at runners the way “Caddyshack” did for golfers or “Slap Shot” did for hockey players.

So, when producers Brian Hunt of Believe Entertainment and Marc Liberman from Above Average teamed up to make an ensemble comedy with an very specific kind of audience, they ended up with “Office Race,” Comedy Central’s new film that pokes fun at the perils of being a runner. “We started breaking down what categories target passionate, but kind of underserved audiences.

And we literally started like listing a bunch of them,” Hunt tells Variety. After a long list of options, Hunt and Liberman landed on the subject of runners. “Brian brought up sort of few different things and I remember seeing running.