NBC’s Sunday Night Football Reworks 2021 Show Open With Production on Industrial Light & Magic’s LED Sound Stage

In less than three weeks, on Sunday, Sept. 12 on NBC and Peacock, seven-time Grammy Award-winner and multi-platinum recording artist Carrie Underwood stars in the debut of the 2021 show open for NBC’s Sunday Night Football, which has been primetime television’s No. 1 program for an unprecedented 10 consecutive years.

Shot at Industrial Light & Magic’s LED sound stage utilizing the company’s StageCraft LED virtual production technology recently used in The Mandalorian, the 2021 Sunday Night Football show open for the first time will feature a virtual football tailgate as a backdrop for Underwood’s performance of “Waiting All Day For Sunday Night.”

“Shooting the new show open for Sunday Night Football is one of the highlights of my year,” says Underwood, who headlines the SNF show open for the ninth consecutive season. “I just love the fact that we get to reinvent it every year. The team behind these shoots is incredible and it’s always a really fun day, especially this year getting to work with such amazing state-of-the-art technology.”

In addition, the show open will highlight user-generated cameos from some of the NFL’s biggest stars, as well as fans’ self-recorded video from NFL tailgates.

“We are excited about this year’s new collaboration with Carrie, which utilizes virtual production technology to generate real-time environments for Carrie’s performance, including a ‘tailgate’ to salute this game’s great fans, who have been ‘waiting all day for Sunday night’ and will be incorporated with their own user-generated tailgate videos,” says Tripp Dixon, NBC Sports creative director of the SNF show open.