A League Of Their Own TV Series In The Works At Amazon
There's no crying in baseball, or at Amazon Studios. The retail giant-slash-streaming service is developing a television adaptation of A League of Their Own, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
Will Graham (Mozart in the Jungle) and Abbi Jacobson (Broad City) are on board to co-write and executive produce the series, based on the Penny Marshall-directed feature film of the same name. The project, which is being envisioned as a half-hour comedy, isn't so much a cut-and-dry traditional reboot as it is a modern take on the A League of Their Own story.
The new A League of Their Own won't feature Geena Davis' original character Dottie or her younger sister, Kit, played by Lori Petty. Dottie and Kit were the central protagonists of the 1992 film, which told the story of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that came about when Major League Baseball was almost shut down during World War II. The two sisters joined the AAGPBL and played for the Rockford Peaches, eventually making their way to the World Series. Tom Hanks portrayed Jimmy Dugan, a baseball manager inspired by Jimmie Foxx and Hack Wilson, and the film also featured Madonna as Mae, Rosie O'Donnell as Doris, Megan Cavanagh as Marla Hooch, Garry Marshall as Walter Harvey, and David Strathairn as AAGPBL general manager Ira Lowenstein.
A cast hasn't yet been set for the series, but we do know that Jacobson won't have an onscreen role, as the ink on her deal is still drying. Amazon Studios also plans to establish a concentrated writers room to craft and deliver scripts before it makes an official decision on how to proceed with the project.
Here's the official logline for the series: "A League of Their Own is a half-hour comedy infusing the warmth, humor, and DNA of the classic film, while taking a contemporary spin on the stories of the women surrounding the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The show will begin with the formation of the league in 1943 and follows the Rockford Peaches, season to season as they struggle to keep the team alive through close games, injuries, late night bar crawls, sexual awakenings, not crying, and road trips across a rapidly changing United States. The series dives deeper into the issues facing the country while following a ragtag team of women figuring themselves out while fighting to realize their dreams of playing professional baseball."
Sources close to the in-development series state that Graham and Jacobson contacted both original film director Marshall and actress Davis to "get their blessing for the Amazon take." The show comes a year after Fox paired with Major League Baseball to create the script drama series Pitch, which starred Kylie Bunbury as Ginny Baker, one of the first women to break gender barriers in professional baseball. The show was canceled after just one season.
Amazon's A League of Their Own television series is still in its early stages, but fingers crossed that the studio will hit a home run.