Friday Night Lights fans get ready for a new generation to live by the motto: “Clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose.”
The critically acclaimed drama is in talks to be rebooted with Universal Television, per multiple reports. Puck initially broke the news.
Deadline reported on Thursday, November 14 that the series’ original creators Jason Katims, Pete Berg and Brian Grazer are involved in the project. The new adaptation is currently in the early stages.
The new series will still be set in the world of high school football. The reimagined show will focus on new characters rather than the previous cast.
Friday Night Lights premiered in 2006 and told the story of a high school football team in a small Texas town. It was initially based on H.G. Bissinger’s book and a 2004 film of the same name, The TV show had an all-star cast that included Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton, Taylor Kitsch, Jesse Plemons, Minka Kelly, Aimee Teegarden, Michael B. Jordan and more. Friday Night Lights went on for five seasons before it wrapped up for good in 2011.
Since the show ended, there have been talks about a potential reboot or a new film adaptation. Grazer previously stated that the idea of a movie was being floated around.
“We’re working on another Friday Night Lights movie in Del Rio, Texas on a border town that takes place in 2015,” the producer said in a 2021 interview with Collider. “[We hope to be making that [in] the beginning of next year.”
Grazer teased that the big screen project could lead “into a new series that takes place in a more recent time.”
While Friday Night Lights fans have been hopeful to see the series return at some point, Britton, 57, was skeptical. She previously shared she couldn’t see the show being rebooted with the original stars.
“We’ll do a reunion for sure, like a cast reunion, [but] I don’t see them going back into that story, at least with this cast,” the actress said in a July 2021 interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I heard inklings a few years ago that they were gonna make another Friday Night Lights. Now meanwhile, we know we’ve already had a movie, we already had this TV show, and then if they were to do it again with like, a whole different iteration of it, I don’t know. I would think that would be sort of odd.”
However, other stars have expressed their interest in possibly returning. Zach Gilford would be down on one condition.
“What made that show was the authenticity,” Gilford, 42, exclusively told Us Weekly in May. “As long as there was some storyline that wasn’t contrived to bring a number of the characters back together, I’m all for it.”
