A potential reboot of Friday Night Lights is staying within the NBCUniversal family.
Peacock has won a bidding war for the project, which is now in development at the NBCU-owned streamer. Universal Television, which produced the critically beloved 2006-11 series, has been working on a new version of the show, but it wasn’t set up at a network or streamer before now.
The new version will reunite several key members of the original show’s creative team: series creator and pilot director Peter Berg, showrunner Jason Katims and executive producer Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment. All three will exec produce the reboot, along with Imagine’s Kristen Zolner, with Katims again serving as showrunner.
The logline for the new FNL reads, “Following a devastating hurricane, a ragtag high school football team and their damaged, interim coach make an unlikely bid for a Texas high school state championship, becoming a beacon of light for their town.” That description would likely move the new project out of the original show’s fictional locale of Dillon, Texas, which — based on all evidence from its five seasons — was not situated along the state’s Gulf Coast.
Friday Night Lights was inspired by a 1990 nonfiction book by H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger about the football team at Permian High School in Odessa, Texas. Berg directed and co-wrote a 2004 feature film adaptation of the book before creating the series, which ran on NBC and DirecTV’s 101 Network.
Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton headed the cast of the original, starring with Jesse Plemons, Taylor Kitsch, Zach Gilford, Minka Kelly, Gaius Charles, Scott Porter, Aimee Teegarden, Adrianne Palicki and Michael B. Jordan, among others. The show was a launchpad for a number of the actors who portrayed students and football players.
The series was never a breakout hit — hence the network-sharing agreement between NBC and DirecTV for seasons three through five — but it was a critical favorite with a cult following. Friday Night Lights won three Emmys, including best lead actor in a drama for Chandler and best writing for a drama (Katims) in its final season.
Deadline first reported the news.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
