I think more than a few of us have been quietly waiting to hear about a remake of Penny Marshall’s classic, imminently quotable baseball comedy, A League Of Their Own. Well, we’re now getting it. Kinda. Amazon is developing a TV series based on the 1992 film, and while that’s pretty distressing (“There’s no crying in baseball”, or movies either.) the talent involved is encouraging.
Broad City‘s Abbi Jacobsen and Mozart In The Jungle‘s Will Graham will co-write and exec-produce the series, described as a half-hour comedy. The original movie starred Tom Hanks, Madonna, Geena Davis, Lori Petty, and Rosie O’Donnell as members of an all-female baseball league started during WWII as most Major League players were sent off to fight. The film is not only one of the best of Hank’s career, I think it’s the best for just about everybody involved, and I would put Penny Marshall on that list. You can watch it today and it’s just as entertaining now as 20 years ago.
So maybe this won’t be so bad? Sadly, THR says Jacobsen won’t take a role in front of the camera, which is kinda odd. Maybe that will change as the series rounds the bases. Here’s a synopsis straight from Amazon:
“A League of Their Own” is a half-hour comedy infusing the warmth, humor and DNA of the classic film, while taking a contemporary spin on the stories of the women surrounding the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The show will begin with the formation of the league in 1943 and follows the Rockford Peaches, season to season as they struggle to keep the team alive through close games, injuries, late night bar crawls, sexual awakenings, not crying and road trips across a rapidly changing United States. The series dives deeper into the issues facing the country while following a ragtag team of women figuring themselves out while fighting to realize their dreams of playing professional baseball.
