Friday Night Lights Fans Just Got The Best Possible News
"Friday Night Lights" concluded on NBC in 2011, but it's still one of the most beloved TV dramas of the past 20 years — just look at its scores on Rotten Tomatoes, where it's 97% Fresh among critics and 93% Fresh among fans. The show about the ups-and-downs of a high school football team in small-town Texas was the kind of series that you could enjoy even if you weren't necessarily a sports fan. It had something for everyone: sports drama, high school drama, and of course the marriage between Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and his wife Tami (Connie Britton), which is still one of the all-time great TV relationships.
Since 2011, "Friday Night Lights" fans have been hoping for the franchise to continue in some way. In 2018, they got their wish when Variety announced an upcoming "Friday Night Lights" movie, which will be directed by David Gordon Green. At the time, it was reported that the movie wouldn't be a sequel to the TV series, or the 2004 Billy Bob Thornton movie that launched the franchise. Instead, Variety reported that it would be based on H.G. Bissinger's 1990 nonfiction book of the same name, which was about the 1988 Permian High School football team's march to a Texas state championship. Since then, the biggest development was that Green left the project in 2019 due to scheduling conflicts with the "Halloween" franchise, and was replaced by John Erick Dowdle (via The Hollywood Reporter).
But in a recent interview with Collider, producer Brian Grazer revealed some big plans for the future of "Friday Night Lights."
Friday Night Lights is coming back to TV, and we know more about the new movie, too
Grazer shared several updates about "Friday Night Lights" in a wide-ranging interview with Collider's Steve Weintraub (via YouTube). Grazer said that the production for the movie would be working in the Texas border town of Del Rio, and that he hoped to begin filming in early 2022. He also said the movie will be set in 2015.
But the even bigger reveal is that the upcoming "Friday Night Lights" movie will serve as the jumping off point for a brand new TV series. Grazer didn't reveal many details about the plot of the show, but did say that the show will be set in present day. Finally, Grazer announced that the showrunners will be John Erick Dowdle and his brother, Drew.
The brothers are frequent collaborators who have usually worked on horror films. They're best known for the 2014 horror film "As Above, So Below," the 2015 thriller "No Escape," and the 2018 Paramount Network drama "Waco," which starred Taylor Kitsch as the Texas cult leader David Koresh.
It's still too early to know what the "Friday Night Lights" movie and accompanying TV series might look like, or whether they can recapture the magic of the original. But the good news is, there's going to be a lot more "Friday Night Lights" in the future.