When Prime Video’s, Words + Pictures’ and Sadoux Productions’ Novak Djokovic documentary, “The Wolf in Winter,” releases on Aug. 20, it will close the book on a production nearly 10 years in the making.

Jason Hehir, the director of “The Last Dance” and “Andre the Giant,” was brought on in 2024. Catching up with SBJ’s Rob Schaefer after a star-studded premiere last week in Manhattan, Hehir recalled his impression going into his first conversations with Djokovic’s team at the 2023 U.S. Open: skeptical.

“I knew that he had really strong convictions, which is great for a filmmaker,” Hehir said of Djokovic. “But sometimes when those convictions are more than strong and they’re tyrannical, it’s not good for a filmmaker.”

Djokovic is not listed as a producer on the project but clearly had input on the narrative. He referred to Hehir and producer Nina Krstic as “partners” in a panel after the screening and recounted “going back and forth with many versions” of the film, trying to find a “win-win-win” for everyone.

“The days of doing a documentary about a high-profile athlete without their having some sort of involvement in the evolution of the project are done,” Hehir said. “The most difficult challenge in my job now is not the telling of the story. It’s how to thread the needle between satisfying the athlete, maintaining your own artistic integrity and informing the audience as best as possible and telling the story that you think is going to be the most interesting to a wide audience.”

Details on the content of the film are embargoed — and this is not a movie review newsletter — so we’ll let you decide how well that needle was threaded.

But it continues quite an interesting year in the tennis documentary space, following Netflix’s rollout of projects on Rafael Nadal’s career (“Rafa”) and the rivalry and friendship of Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova (“Chris & Martina”). The ATP Tour is also set to release a four-part docuseries about its Rolodex of No. 1-ranked players in the coming months.

Hehir is bullish on the demand for sports docs.

“I am very confident that the telling of sports stories is never going to be something that people lose an appetite for,” he said. “There’s an appetite for McDonald’s, and there’s an appetite for a really well-made New York strip. People are always going to have an appetite for something that a lot of care is put into and is really well done.”