Friday Night Lights is set to return to television screens, with a reboot currently in development.
Sources recently confirmed to Variety that Universal Television is working on a new version of the late 2000s drama series. The show will reportedly have the same series showrunner, Jason Katims, in addition to executive producers Brian Grazer and Kristen Zolner from Imagine Entertainment.
The new Friday Night Lights is expected to feature an entirely new group of students in high school, though cameos from original cast members are not yet confirmed.
The original show, which aired from 2006 to 2011 on both NBC and the 101 Network, followed a high school football team in the fictional town of Dillon in rural west Texas. The show was based on the 1990 novel by HG Bissinger, which was later adapted into a film in 2004 by Peter Berg. He also served as creator and director of the series.
While Friday Night Lights featured an ensemble cast, the original show largely focused on Panthers football coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), his supportive wife and high school guidance counselor Tami (Connie Britton), and their teenage daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden).
Britton hinted at a possible reboot of the beloved show back in 2021, telling Entertainment Tonight: “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.”
However, the White Lotus star did mention that she had “heard inklings a few years ago that they were gonna make another” Friday Night Lights.
“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,” Britton added. “I would think that would be sort of odd.”
Back in 2016, which also marked the 10th anniversary of the show’s premiere episode, The Independentspoke to Berg about whether there would ever be a spin-off of the popular show. “I don’t know,” he said at the time. “Maybe some spin-off version of it – a moment, a flash. I don’t know if you’ll ever see that show reunited, though.”
He also touched on what he thought made the series as successful as it was, attributing it to the inspiration for the show.
“Friday Night Lights was special because it was based on an incredible book by [journalist] Buzz Bissinger,” Berg said. “When we made the movie, we couldn’t get into so much of it – he talked about racism, religion, family values.
“The book is so epic in its scope that we had to pick a narrow focus for the movie and we regretted that. So, I always knew that it really lent itself well to a TV show. If you’re a fan of the show, you should read the book.”
