‘Friday Night Lights’ Reboot Series In Development

Friday Night Lights may be returning to television.

The beloved show — never quite a smash on broadcast TV but one of the bigger cult hits of the last 25 years — is reportedly under development once again, with Universal looking to make a “new version” of the series, which focused on the ups and downs of the players and coaches of a Texas high school football team.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, “two of thee original show’s executive producers — showrunner Jason Katims and Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment — are involved in the new version. Sources say the reboot would focus on new characters rather than returning to Kyle Chandler- and Connie Britton-led cast of the original.”

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Friday Night Lights began as a non-fiction book by H.G. Bissinger about a real high school football program in Texas. It was then adapted into a short-lived TV show (called Against the Grain, starring a young Ben Affleck) and then into a successful film, directed by Peter Berg, starring Billy Bob Thornton as the team’s coach.

Berg then developed the material again, this time for television, with Kyle Chandler playing the role of inspirational coach, Eric Taylor. (His famous catchphrase: “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”) This version of Friday Night Lights aired for five seasons on NBC and DirecTV in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The series never topped ratings charts, but it won several awards, and routinely appeared on lists of the best TV shows of the era. It also launched numerous careers; its young ensemble cast included Taylor Kitsch, Jesse Plemmons, Zach Gilford, Minka Kelly, Adrianne Palicki and, in later years, Michael B. Jordan and Jurnee Smollett.

Football is possibly even more popular now than it was when Bissinger wrote his book; football ratings on TV are just about the only thing that continues to draw huge mass audiences these days. So the impulse to bring back a beloved football show makes a lot of sense, even if the show was never hugely popular the first time around.