Award-winning filmmaker Chris Smith and Emmy along with Golden Globe winner Joe Lewis, bring forth a new six part documentary, 100 Foot Wave. The HBO Sports documentary will intimately capture the decade-long odyssey of surfing pioneer Garret McNamara, who after visiting Nazaré, Portugal in hope of conquering a 100-foot wave, pushed the sport to ever-greater heights and alongside locals helped transform the small fishing village into the world’s preeminent big-wave surfing destination.
The series will premiere this spring on HBO and HBO Max and over the course of six episodes, will tell the transformative story of the season village with McNamara and his peers’ ongoing search for the tallest wave on the planet. After being recruited by a band of Nazaré locals who hoped to see if the dangerous swells they had observed their entire lives were surfable, McNamara – the Guinness World Record holder for the largest wave ever surfed for eight years – and his wife, Nicole, traveled to the remote city in 2010 to pursue the monster waves.
Standing atop the city’s abandoned 500-year-old lighthouse, they witnessed surf more dangerous than any they had ever seen, and a possible answer to Garrett’s lifelong quest to ride a 100-foot wave. In the years to come, their journey helped attract the most fearless big-wave surfers to Nazaré and helped solidify it as the marquee destination in the sport.
The series captures the common spirit and fearless passion shared by McNamara and big-wave surfers from across the world as they push themselves through life-altering injuries and tantalizing near-misses in their pursuit of the inconceivable.
