ESPN and the National Football League, already in business on Monday Night Football, have expanded that relationship to feature films.

ESPN’s Films-Movies division has joined forces with Andell Entertainment and NFL Films to produce “Lombardi,” a drama about iconic Green Bay Packers head coach Vince Lombardi.

Perhaps the sports broadcaster’s biggest innovation so far is its idea to open the Friday of a down weekend between the conference championships and the Super Bowl in 2011, the 40th anniversary that the championship trophy was named after Lombardi.

Ron Semiao, ESPN Films-Movies senior veep, said the release strategy will allow ESPN and the NFL to use its collective marketing muscle to full advantage. He hopes the release slot becomes the playbook that ESPN and NFL will follow for future football films.

At a time when marketing films has never been tougher, this sounds like the equivalent of tossing red meat to football fans when they are hungriest.

Said Semiao: “If you released an NFL-themed motion picture in that off-week before the Super Bowl, that would give you an entire month to promote it during the playoffs, and give an answer to all those people asking, `what am I doing to do until the Super Bowl starts?’ Our hope is to establish an annual franchise of an NFL-themed movie that comes out in theaters in that off week. What better way to kick that off than with a film about the iconic coach they named the Super Bowl trophy after?”

If you follow ESPN’s marathon football coverage as closely as I do, you know it is aggressive and full of attitude. “Lombardi” is going that route, too. Semiao said that ESPN has transformed the film’s creative tone into something that resembles “Raging Bull.” He should know, since he rewrote the David Murray script himself.

The film’s former focus--the week leading up to the 1967 "Ice Bowl" championship game played between the Packers and Dallas Cowboys in 13 below zero weather—has broadened into a long rivalry with Cowboys head coach Tom Landry, whose cool demeanor was the exact opposite of Lombardi’s fire and brimstone. They came up together as line coaches for the New York Giants, with Lombardi leaving after that team lost the famed 1958 championship game. Desperate to be a head coach, he took over a Packers team so hapless that other owners wanted the commissioner to fold the team. Lombardi and Landry lined their teams up on opposing sidelines for the Ice Bowl and Lombardi burnished his coaching legend by walking off that frozen field with a victory, winning Super Bowl I weeks later.

Andell Entertainment's Andrew Hauptman will produce with Chris Olsen and Eric Hayes. The film is partly based on Packers offensive lineman Jerry Kramer’s memoir “Instant Replay.” Vince Lombardi Jr. and Kramer are consultants. Andell Entertainment is financing development and they’ll shop to studios shortly because ESPN won’t finance this.

Some might be threatened by ESPN's encroachment into features: its infiltration into local sports coverage certainly drew the ire of rivals in press coverage last week. But football films often disappear (“The Express: The Ernie Davis Story”) and even the ones that do work rarely gross more than $50 million domestic and nothing overseas.

The recent implosion of “Moneyball”—the $57 million Steven Soderbergh version got shelved three days before Brad Pitt began portraying Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane—shows that a sports film (especially one where he protagonist is an exec, not a player) needs clear commercial appeal or it won’t get made.

On paper, the release plan and promotional might of ESPN and the NFL makes for a pretty good game plan.