Just short of a year after building an all-star cast for the pilot adaptation of the iconic sports film, Amazon has chosen to give a series order to the League of Their Own series reboot starring Abbi Jacobson (Broad City) and D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place), according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Will Graham (Mozart in the Jungle) created and executive produced the pilot with Jacobson while Hailey Wierengo, head of Graham’s Amazon-based Field Trip Productions, also acted as an exec producer on the pilot before being picked up for the full series. Graham is set to serve as showrunner for the series moving forward.
“Twenty-eight years ago, Penny Marshall told us a story about women playing professional baseball that up until then had been largely overlooked,” Graham and Jacobson said in a statement. “We grew up obsessed with the film, like everyone else. Three years ago, we approached Sony with the idea of telling a new, still overlooked set of those stories. With the help of an enormously talented team of collaborators, an amazing cast, and the devoted support of Amazon to this project, we feel beyond lucky and excited to get to bring these characters to life. It took grit, fire, authenticity, wild imagination and a crackling sense of humor for these players to achieve their dreams. We’re hoping to bring audiences a story with all of those qualities.“
Though based on the 1992 film, the series will not feature the sisters Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller played by Geena Davis (GLOW) and Lori Petty (Orange is the New Black) from the original. The official logline for the series reads as follows:
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.
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The cast for the series is set to be comprised of Jacobson, Carden, Chanté Adams (Roxanne Roxanne), Gbemisola Ikumelo (The Last Tree), Kelly McCormack (Letterkenny), Roberta Colindrez (Vida) and Priscilla Delgado (Julieta) with recurring guest stars including Molly Ephraim (Last man Standing), Kate Berlant (Sorry to Bother You) and Melanie Field (The Angel of Darkness). The pilot was helmed by Jamie Babbit (Russian Doll) and sources report some surviving members of the AAGPBL are serving as consultants on both the pilot and rest of the series.
“There’s no crying in baseball, or at Prime Video,” Vernon Sanders, co-head of television at Amazon, said in a statement. “Will and Abbi have taken a classic movie, reimagining it for a new generation with new characters and their own fresh, modern vision on a timeless story of big dreams, friendship, love, and, of course, baseball. We’re so excited to partner with Sony to bring this emotional, exciting new series to our Prime Video customers around the world.”
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The Amazon project marks the second time the property was adapted for the small screen, with CBS trying their hand at it in 1993 with original stars Megan Cavanagh and Tracy Reiner reprising their roles, but was poorly received and saw very low ratings, causing the network to pull the series after just three aired episodes, broadcasting the remaining three later that summer.
The film followed sisters Dottie and Kit as they were recruited to join the AAGPBL and played for the Rockford Peaches before a trade saw them face off in the World Series. Tom Hanks (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) played manager Jimmy Dugan, inspired by former big leaguers Jimmie Foxx and Hack Wilson. Scripted by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel and directed by Penny Marshall (Big), the film also starred Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, Megan Cavanagh and David Strathairn.
Sources report that Graham and Jacobson reached out to Marshall, before her death in December ’18, and Davis to get their blessing before moving forward with the series adaptation. CBS previously tried to adapt the film in 1993 with a series that featured Megan Cavanagh (Marla Hooch) and Tracy Reiner (Betty “Spaghetti”) reprising their roles. The series was pulled after three episodes.
