Paramount Plus has set a November 25 premiere date for its football-themed comedy film Fantasy Football.

The comedy, which stars Marsai Martin (Black-ish) and Omari Hardwick (Power), follows a star football player and his daughter, who discovers she can magically control her father’s performance on the football field, according to the streaming service.

Along with Martin and Hardwick, Fantasy Football stars Kelly Rowland, Rome Flynn, Elijah Richardson, Hanani Taylor, Abrigail Killmeier, Tyla Harris and Isac Ivan.

Fantasy Football is produced by The SpringHill Company and Genius Entertainment, with Martin serving as producer along with LeBron James, Spencer Beighley, Jamal Henderson, Joshua Martin and Timothy Bourne.■

Nickelodeon will team with Awesomeness Films and LeBron James’ SpringHill Company to produce a new original film, Fantasy Football, the companies said Monday.

The film, produced by and starring Marsai Martin (Black-ish), follows a 15-year old girl who discovers she can control her pro football player dad’s prowess on the field through her video game, said Nickelodeon.

SpringHill and Martin's Genius Entertainment will serve as executive producers of the film, which will debut on Paramount Plus in 2022.

Also slated to debut next year on the streaming service is Nickelodeon and Awesomeness Films’ Hush Hush, a film adaptation of the young adult novels written by Becca Fitzpatrick. The films follows a 16-year old high school student who falls for a new student and unwittingly get caught in the crosshairs of an ancient battle between fallen angels and the immortal, said Nick. 

Nickelodeon and Awesomeness Films Studio head Syrinthia Studer said in making the announcement:  “With the continuing growth of Nickelodeon and Awesomeness’s live-action film studio business, we are curating a slate of aspirational, heartfelt films for everyone. From the fantasy and romance themes found in Hush Hush, to the love of sport and family captured in Fantasy Football, we can’t wait to entertain audiences everywhere with new YA and family stories about what they already love.”

Ahead of the NFL’s regular season kickoff tonight, Comcast and CBS Sports Digital announced a partnership that brings a fantasy football experience to Comcast X1 boxes.

The integration will let Comcast X1 subs access their CBS Sports Fantasy Football league via the TV screen and pull up elements such as league standings, weekly matchups, and real-time stats during live NFL games.

Customers can launch the experience via the X1 sports app or by saying, “Show me my fantasy football team” or “my fantasy football team” into the X1 voice remote.

When opened on X1, the CBS Sports Fantasy Football experience will appear on the right-hand side of the TV and resize the live video.

RELATED: Comcast Expands X1 Sports App Features

The integration follows other OTT-facing apps and services that have been integrated with X1, including YouTube (in trial) and Netflix.

RELATED: Comcast Starts to Test YouTube App on X1 Set-Tops

“This new integration between Comcast and CBS Sports Digital is nirvana for fantasy football fans,”  Preston Smalley, VP of product management for apps, sports and content at Comcast Cable, said in a statement. “Until now, the millions of people in the U.S. who play fantasy sports would track their team’s progress on a separate device splitting their attention from the live play on TV.  By putting everything on the same screen, we’ve created an experience that’s immersive, informative and complete.”

“We’re excited to offer our fantasy players this enhanced experience on Xfinity X1,” added Jeffrey Gerttula, Senior Vice President and General Manager, CBS Sports Digital. “The integration plays right into our focus on offering custom leagues and features for serious fantasy players, who can now seamlessly track their teams while watching games on the same screen.”

When this year’s National Football League season kicks off in September, a number of networks and digital players will be betting heavily that greatly improved fantasy football offerings will help them run up some impressive audiences and digital revenue.

Much is at stake in those efforts, which are particularly focused on improved mobile apps, cross-platform features and expanded fantasy football programming. With sports rights already well into stratospheric levels, a passionate fantasy sports fan base has helped create larger audiences for televised sports and digital platforms, executives say.

Overall there are some 56.8 million fantasy sports players in the U.S. and Canada today, double the 28.4 million that played in 2009, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. Its research shows that football is by far the most popular fantasy sport, ranking as the favorite among 73% of the players.

“I like to call fantasy sports the greatest second-screen product of all time,” said Marc DeBevoise, executive VP and general manager of CBS Digital Media at CBS Interactive (CBSi). “We have millions of people coming to the site on a monthly basis and we have millions of people playing fantasy sports on the platform.”

While CBSi is one of the few players focused on subscription products, fantasy players also have a major impact on the digital traffic and advertising that supports most offerings. “About 40% of the people who come to our sites and apps play fantasy sports, but they drive 70% to 80% of the engagement,” DeBevoise said. “Fantasy players view seven times more pages than non-fantasy users and they spend seven times more time using our products. It has a huge benefit for both our subscription and our transaction and ad media businesses.”

Others agree. “Fantasy football is a very important part of our overall digital business,” and for the NFL’s overall popularity, explained Cory Mummery, VP of business services for NFL Media. “If you have a member of your fantasy team playing on Monday night, you might watch a game with two teams you might normally not be interested in. It means they are consuming more content, which is definitely good for the league.”

To build on the recent growth, all the major players are putting much more emphasis on mobile as a way of reaching fans. “Three years ago, mobile was used more as a way to follow your team,” said Mummery. “But in the last 18 months, we’ve seen a large transition of activity from desktop to mobile,” which he adds has helped boost engagement and activity.

Such cross-platform efforts have also moved onto connected TVs, where players can increasingly access fantasy sports apps on the big screen. The NFL’s alliance with Microsoft’s Xbox One game console, for example, allows “players to watch the content we are delivering to the platform at the same time they are following their fantasy match,” Mummery explained. “We are really trying to push the boundaries on connected devices and synching up next-generation stats to improve the viewer experience.”

Meanwhile, companies such as ESPN, CBSi, Yahoo and the NFL that provide fantasy football platforms are also ramping up their programming relating to fantasy sports.

ESPN, which is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 1995 launch of ESPN Fantasy Football, is debuting a new “Fantasy Football Kickoff” episode each Tuesday. Like other players, ESPN has added a number of new features on its app, which has been downloaded more than 16 million times.

While all of this has increased competition, the NFL’s Mummery stressed that the rapid growth in fantasy football has been great news for both the league and the various networks that televise its games. “Our competitors, Yahoo, ESPN and others do a great job of growing the overall fantasy fan base, which we think helps the league as a whole,” he said.