The Sandlot Prequel Movie In The Works At Fox

There's heroes and there's legends. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die — and The Sandlot is most definitely a legend. 

Deadline reports that a prequel to the beloved baseball movie The Sandlot is a go at 20th Century Fox. 

Original writer-director David Mickey Evans is on board to write the prequel's script alongside Austin Reynolds. 

The Sandlot didn't stir up much critical acclaim or cash at the box office when it debuted in 1993, but the 1962-set coming-of-age comedy flick became a cult classic over the years and even spawned a pair of sequels: The Sandlot 2 in 2005 and The Sandlot: Heading Home in 2007. 

The original film followed Tom Guiry's Scotty Smalls, who moves with his family to California's San Fernando Valley and attempts to bond with the neighborhood boys over baseball — a sport he can't play but is determined to learn. Lovingly referred to by his last name, Smalls ends up forming lifelong friendships with the eight-player sandlot baseball team, which includes Mike Vitar's Benny, Patrick Renna's Ham, Chauncey Leopardi's Squints, Victor DiMattia's Timmy, Shane Obedzinski's Repeat, Marty York's Yeah-Yeah, Grant Gelt's Bertram, and Brandon Quintin Adams' Kenny. 

Though Fox is keeping official details on the Sandlot prequel on the bench for now, Deadline claims that the film will center around the myth of "the Beast," the massive English Mastiff from the first film that was believed to be a savage, kid-eating, baseball-hoarding monster that everyone in the neighborhood feared. James Earl Jones portrayed the Beast's owner, Mr. Mertle, in the original. 

Bearing that in mind and looking back at what went down in The Sandlot, we can speculate a bit about what else the prequel movie might entail. 

In The Sandlot, after Smalls and Benny sneak into Mr. Mertle's backyard to retrieve Smalls' stepfather's baseball that was signed by Babe Ruth, we learn that Mr. Mertle actually knew the famous professional baseball player in his younger years, before Mr. Mertle went blind after being struck by a baseball. Babe Ruth's career lasted 22 seasons, from 1914 to 1935, so perhaps some scenes in the Sandlot prequel will be set in the '20s or '30s in order to establish Mr. Mertle's past, how he came to own the Beast, and how the legend of the dog began and evolved. 

Additionally, baseball's Golden Era is widely considered to have began around 1920 and lasted until about the mid-1960s, so there's a solid chance the new Sandlot film will take place within that timeframe. 

Until we discover more about the Sandlot prequel, let's sit back, relax, and enjoy a Ham Porter delicacy: the s'more. "First you take a graham. Then you stick the chocolate on the graham. And then you roast the mallow. And when the mallow's flaming, you stick it on the chocolate" — you know the drill.