Amazon Orders A League Of Their Own TV Series From Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson

A television adaptation of the 1992 movie A League of Their Own is coming to Amazon Prime Video. The hourlong series, co-created by Broad City star Abbi Jacobson and Mozart in the Jungle director Will Graham, will focus the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, just like the film, which starred Geena Davis, Tom Hanks and Madonna. This adaptation, though, will take a deeper look at race and sexuality as part of the ensemble cast’s storylines. Amazon made the announcement said at today’s CTAM virtual press tour, the partial replacement of the canceled annual Television Critics Association’s summer tour. Jacobson will star in the series along with The Good Place’s D’Arcy Carden, Bad Hair’s Chanté Adams and Gbemisola Ikumelo, who won a BAFTA for her performance in Brain in Gear. Kelly McCormack, Roberta Colindrez, and Priscilla Delgado will also star in the series. Molly Ephraim, Kate Berlant and Melanie Field will make recurring appearances. “There’s no crying in baseball, or at Prime Video,” Vernon Sanders, Amazon Studios’ co-head of television, 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.” The project has been in the works for three years, when Jacobson and Graham brought the idea of the project to Sony Pictures Television, they said. “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,” Graham and Jacobson said in a statement. “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.” [article_summary section="1"]The pick-up highlights the value streamers are continuing to place on adaptations of existing intellectual property that already has a proven audiences. Amazon Prime Video is working on a Lord of the Rings series adaptation, based on the influential fantasy books and hugely successful movie franchise, for a 2021 release, along with several other high-profile adaptations. Rival streamer HBO Max, meanwhile, is adapting the film series Grease into a musical series, Grease: Rydell High. The 1992 film A League of Their Own, directed by Penny Marshall, was a critical and commercial success, and is largely regarded as a classic. The film was already adapted one time for television: In 1993, CBS aired a short-lived television sitcom adaptation, featuring the same characters from the film.