We know there’s no crying in baseball, but we’re just too emotional at this news to not well up. Amazon Studios is bringing the classic movie A League of Their Own to the small screen. The upcoming new show has been in development for several years, and now it’s finally materializing with Broad City‘s Abbi Jacobson (Broad City) at the helm. She’s slated to both star and cocreate with Will Graham (of Mozart in the Jungle fame).
Jacobson announced the big news on Instagram on August 6th.
“Not a lot of good news floating around these days, but today we got to announce that @willwisslergraham and my reinterpretation of ‘A League of Their Own’ got picked up to series and that means I get to work with this extraordinary cast for hopefully a long time,” Jacobson wrote. “That is some good ass news to me.”
That “extraordinary cast” includes D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place), Chanté Adams (Roxanne Roxanne), Gbemisola Ikumelo (Brain in Gear), Kelly McCormack (Killjoys), Roberta Colindrez (Vida), and Priscilla Delgado (The Protected).
But don’t expect a straight retelling of Kit Keller and Dottie Hinson’s sister story. The League of Their Own series will widen the lens and tell overlooked stories of the era.
According to Entertainment Weekly, A League of Their Own the series will refresh “the joyful spirit of Penny Marshall’s beloved classic, while widening the lens to tell the story of an entire generation of women who dreamed of playing professional baseball.” The show promises to delve into race and sexuality, and will follow “a whole new ensemble of characters as they carve their own paths towards the field, both in the League and outside of it.”
“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 to Deadline. “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.”
They continued, “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.”
The original 1992 film told the story of an all-female baseball team and starred Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, Rosie O’Donnell, and Jon Lovitz.
There’s no set release date for the new Amazon series, but the pilot has been shot and the gears are turning. So in the words of Jimmy Dugan: Come on team; (way more than) dozens of people are waiting for the game to begin.
