'Friday Night Lights' Reboot Finds New Coaches In The Dowdle Brothers
Just in case you forgot, that Friday Night Lights reboot movie is still in the works, and it has a new creative team. John Erick and Drew Dowdle, known collectively as The Dowdle Brothers, have been tasked with making this potentially bad idea happen. Rather than follow-up the original Friday Night Lights movie, or connect to the popular TV series in any way, this new Friday Night Lights will tell a brand new story.
Variety has the new info on the Friday Night Lights reboot I bet you forgot about. The Dowdle Brothers, John Erick and Drew Dowdle, are now handling the project, with both doing a new polish on the script (which was written by David Gordon Green and Josh Parkinson), and John Erick directing and Drew executive producing. Per Variety, "the movie is not a sequel to Universal's 2004 film starring Billy Bob Thornton, nor is it based on NBC's TV series with Kyle Chandler. Instead, it's a new property, though still focused on H.G. Bissinger's non-fiction book about the 1988 Permian High School Panthers as the new Texas football team makes a run toward the state championship."
The Dowdle Brothers' credits include the underseen found-footage horror flick The Poughkeepsie Tapes, the Rec remake Quarantine, and As Above, So Below (another found-footage horror film). The fact that the duo have trafficked primarily in the horror genre is a bit interesting, since Friday Night Lights doesn't fit in with that at all. Are we getting a Friday Night Lights horror movie? No, we're not – although I would gladly watch that. Call it Friday Nightmare on Elm Street Lights or something. Feel free to use that, Dowdle Brothers!
H.G. Bissinger's book followed the Permian Panthers of Odessa – "the winningest high-school football team in Texas history." The book was adapted into a 2004 film by Peter Berg, and while that movie wasn't a smash hit, it was enough to inspire a TV series of the same name. The series had a devoted fan-following and burned "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" into the pop culture lexicon. But will audiences want a whole new version of this story? Wouldn't they be more inclined to watch a movie that, at the very least, brought back Kyle Chandler's coach character? I guess we'll find out.