EXCLUSIVE: Peacock has made it into the end zone with clear eyes and a full heart after scoring the Friday Night Lights reboot series.
Deadline understands that the NBCU streamer beat out Netflix to land a new adaptation of the high school football series in a competitive battle that has played out over the last few days.
Universal Television will produce the series, which comes from Jason Katims, who was the original showrunner, original director Peter Berg and producer Brian Grazer. The trio will exec produce alongside Kristen Zolner for Imagine Entertainment.
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The new series, which is now in development at Peacock, will be set following a devastating hurricane, when a rag tag high school football team and their damaged, interim coach make an unlikely bid for a Texas High School State Championship and become a beacon of light for their town.
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Friday Night Lights began life as a book – Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team and a Dream by H.G. Bissinger – before being turned into a feature film in 2004, directed by Peter Berg. The film starred the likes of Billy Bob Thornton, Garrett Hedlund, Jay Hernandez, Tim McGraw, Lucas Black, Derek Luke and Amber Heard.
Connie Britton also starred in the film and then went on to star in the television series adaptation, which premiered on NBC in 2006 and was set in the fictional town of Dillon in rural West Texas. Britton played Tami Taylor, who was married to Coach Taylor, played by Kyle Chandler.
Minka Kelly, Adrianne Palicki, Jurnee Smollett, Michael B. Jordan, Matt Lauria, Aimee Teegarden, Scott Porter, Jesse Plemons, Taylor Kitsch, Gauis Charles, Zach Gilford and Derek Phillips also starred in the series.
It was originally commissioned by NBC, premiering in 2006, and ran for two seasons on the network before the company struck a deal with DirecTV, after the 2007 writers strike, which co-produced three seasons that ran on The 101 Network before airing on NBC.
Friday Night Lights aired for 76 episodes across five seasons through 2011. It was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series at the Emmys in 2011, losing out to Mad Men, but Kyle Chandler won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Jason Katims won for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.