The Best Baseball Film Is Being Remade Into A Series
The 1976 hit baseball film Bad News Bears will be remade into a series, this time with a female lead coach.
One of the most famous baseball movies of all time, The Bad News Bears, is getting the same treatment as A League of Their Own by getting a new series. There is nothing that brings in the joy of spring like the smell of the dirt, the green of the grass, the sound of the ball hitting the bat, the feel of the leather glove, and the taste of a hotdog at a baseball game; the hot summer weather hits and there is nothing like air conditioner and popcorn. Luckily for us, there is a bevy of movies and tv series that focus on America’s favorite pastime, including The Natural, Major League, Little Big League, and no fewer than three that star Kevin Costner (apparently, he loves the game) as it appears baseball film and TV are in their primes.
According to Deadline, Paramount is taking some liberties with the original source material and bringing a new series with a new main character for audiences to love to hate. While the original film focused on an alcoholic former baseball pitcher coaching a team of misfits in an attempt not to be the worst team in the league, The Bad News Bears will be rebooting that premise by centering on a new female character. Writer Corey Nickerson (known for Black-ish) is reimagining the storyline to focus on a down-on-her-luck divorcee who is forced to take over coaching her son’s baseball team filled with a ragtag group of misfits.
The original The Bad News Bears released in 1976 and featured Walter Matthau as a struggling ex-minor league pitcher who takes on the impossible task of coaching a group of terrible players and trying to turn them into a cohesive unit in an ultra-competitive California little league. His unconventional plan is to recruit a strong-armed pitcher named Amanda, who is insecure about her tomboy image, but is undoubtedly the best pitcher on the team. Together with the best athlete in the neighborhood, but also the troublemaker on the miniature Harley Davidson, Kelly Leak (played by Jackie Earl Haley, who became notable for his roles as Rorschach in Watchmen and taking over the role of Freddy Krueger in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street in 2010), band together and find success unexpectedly.
The film was well received by critics and audiences alike as it holds a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Roger Ebert called it a “scathing review of competition in America.” It spawned two sequels, 1978’s The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, and 1979’s The Bad News Bears Go To Japan. It also picked up a two-season television series in 1979 and 1980 starring Jack Warren.
There was most recently a remake in 2005 starring Billy Bob Thorton as the alcoholic coach and featuring Greg Kinnear and Marcia Gay Harden. While A League of Their Own found itself seeing a load of backlash from fans wanting to see a carbon copy recreation of the Tom Hanks and Geena Davis film, we’re hoping it will be mostly good news for The Bad News Bears and their reimagined storyline involving a woman coach. With writer Corey Nickerson drawing on her own personal experience coaching her son’s baseball team, there is plenty of reason to believe it will be genuine and humorous, regardless of the source material.
