Parks And Recreation co-creator Mike Schur is now making a Field Of Dreams TV show for Peacock
The Field Of Dreams baseball game last week was such a hit that the Field Of Dreams franchise is expanding
TV News Field of Dreams
Has there have been a multimedia venture more immediately successful than last week’s Field Of Dreams baseball game between the Yankees and the White Sox? Not only did America’s favorite team get crushed by Chicago’s least-favorite team with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth—an accidental nod to the fact that the first walk-off home run that the Sox ever got against the Yankees was hit by “Shoeless” Joe Jackson in 1919, with Jackson being the guy whose ghost shows up in a little Kevin Costner film called Field Of Dreams—but the game also inspired a huge upswing in Field Of Dreams DVD and Blu-ray sales. It also pulled in the best ratings a regular season Major League Baseball game has gotten in over 15 years
Now the (baseball) hits are just going to keep coming, with Peacock announcing today in a press release that it has granted a straight-to-series order to a Field Of Dreams TV show that will be written and executive produced by Parks And Recreation co-creator Michael Schur. The series will reportedly “reimagine the mixture of family, baseball, Iowa, and magic that makes the movie so enduring and beloved” (Big Iowa is definitely lining somebody’s pockets to make sure the state gets mentioned in there, right?), and NBCUniversal’s Television And Streaming President Lisa Katz added that this kind of “whimsical and grounded” story is “where Mike Schur excels.”
The movie, while not especially serious, is also not known for being super funny, so it’ll be interesting to see if Schur introduces more of his comedic sensibilities into this thing. It will also be interesting to see who they cast as not-Kevin Costner… though Costner would probably be willing to do it. Nobody’s ever made any kind of baseball thing without at least running it by him first.
72 Comments
I could totally see a Schur succeeding with this with maybe a toned down, later seasons Good Place vibe; especially the series finale, when they really leaned into the sentimentality (while still remaining hilarious).
Hell, why not just make it a combined Good Place/Field of Dreams sequel? I honestly can’t remember how that series ended, but weren’t they restructuring the afterlife? Why can’t it be this?
Field of Dreams is a good movie. Its not the best movie ever but it accomplishes what it sets out to do. The thing is, the story isn’t very complicated. Its the perfect amount of story for a hour and 47 minutes long movie. It is not enough story for a two and a half hour movie nor is it enough story for a TV series to sustain multiple seasons(0r even one).Maybe lets just keep it the fine movie it is and not try to expand it, reboot it or give it a sequel
If it was anyone other than Schur I would just assume it would be a sappy weekly procedural where People Will Come, and each week a different person has a problem in their personal life aided by one of the ghost baseball players.
And every week… the catcher is secretly their dad!But seriously, your take sounds exactly like something that NBC would try to air after This is Us.
“That’s my dream come true!”
so God Friended Me but with Jackson, then Ruth, then etceterathat sounds really plausible(Just to note: Wonderfalls is the superior God Friended Me)
Yeah, but with Ken Tremendous attached, it’s gonna be all underrated WAR machines or xFIP stars like Tim Raines, Addie Joss, Orval Overall, or Joe Morgan.
Oprah’s going to take the most underqualified yet most pompous baseball ghost and give him his own show.
Hey, since the new Ghostbusters takes place in the Midwest, can we have a crossover where the kids come out to Iowa and try to capture Shoeless Joe Jackson?
Yeah but think about just how many dads could come walking outta that corn field.
Maybe it could be like Fantasy Island, where a different guest comes to the field every week to have a dream involving a historically renowned baseball player.
I would love that if the baseball players were all historically accurate.“Wow, who would have thought that famed 1920s Baseball player Franky “One Nut” McDoogan would be able to help me reconcile with my dead mother”“Yeah about that, I am glad he helped but I managed to look up all the funny old timey words he was saying and it turns out they were all racial slurs for Italians.”
It’s because someone is remaking “A League of Their Own” and now everyone need to have a baseball property in production.
How long before we hear about a Bull Durham series?
For what it’s worth, Shoeless Joe was almost certainly guilty. No, that’s not strictly relevant to the topic of discussion here. It just bugs me.
Guilty of what?
Original Sin
Having the most 1910s imaginable nickname.
Boxcar Howie would like a word with you.
and his buddies, Cappy Jim and Underpants Roy.
He may have been guilty of taking gamblers money but he sure as hell wasn’t guilty of throwing any games. From the gamblers point of view he was probably guilty of reneging on the deal but I don’t mind that very much.
Yr
Team
G
AB
R
H
2B
3B
HR
GS
RBI
BB
IBB
SO
SH
SF
HBP
GIDP
AVG
OBP
SLG
1917
White Sox
6
23
4
7
0
0
0
0
2
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
.304
.333
.304
1919 White Sox
8
32
5
12
3
0
1
0
6
1
0
2
0
0
0
0
.375
.394
.563
I’m not going to try to reformat this simple copy paste you can figure it out yourself.
Of course he was guilty, in that he threw the game for gambling profits. He wasn’t as involved as Gandil and Risberg, but still. Plenty of players gambled or threw games back then, including Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker. Landis hushed it up because he was sick of dealing with gambling and wanted baseball to move on. The owners DID screw the players, by using all sorts of dirty tricks to keep salaries low, and one bad slide and you can’t play any more? You’re gone, no pension, lifelong pain. I don’t blame the players for getting what they can while they can. Even now, MLB makes more money of Shoeless Joe than any player of that era could ever learn. And baseball STILL does it. Make money off the home run chase in 1998, of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and ARod and the Bash Brothers, and then punish those players.
*Players walk out of the corn field*Shoeless Joe: This is the bad place.
If there’s anybody to trust on this project, it’s one of the guys behind Fire Joe Morgan.
Ya. Love Schur and the movie. But glorifying Iowa, home of racist Steve King, and the people who used to vote for him is an ugh.Iowa doesn’t deserve something like the Field of Dreams.
You’re not fooling anyone, Laserface1242.
and South Park sucks!
Oh piss off. Not all Iowans suck.(Says a former Iowan who moved to Minneapolis 20 years ago.)
People and places are complicated. Wasn’t Iowa also one of the first place gay folks could get married?As someone born in a small Midwestern town who now lives in an East coast city, I wish more people would appreciate that people in Iowa cities are about the same as those in coastal cities, and the same comparison exists for rural towns and, say, western Massachusetts.
I think Iowa was the 3rd state to allow gay marriage.But then the people of California rose up and banned it again.You’d think California would be more embarrassed about that.
I didn’t think Californians possessed the ability to be embarrassed.
oh, we do, we do. Step outside the urban centers and into either the rural foothills or into the agricultural interior, or in many cases, the ex-urb surburbs, and you run into the full tilt anti-vax Trump 2020 flag on the raised pickup morons who regularly drive into the cities to march around the capitol, or occasionally CANCER TREATMENT CENTERS to scream at and sometimes assault health care workers and PEOPLE GETTING CHEMO.
We are thoroughly embarrassed by them, and wish the folks in charge of other places (*coughFloridaTexas*cough) would be more embarrassed by THEIR gangs of idiots.
If you build it, and fill it with Judy Garland records, they will come…
Field of Dreams is one of my favorite movies and I just don’t get this. Hopefully it’s one of those things that’s announced as in development but never makes it, as I can’t imagine it being good. The concept is stretched to its limit by the movie, it’d be snapped in show format.Also, Field of Dreams does have some excellent humor. “You said your finger was a gun”, “Watch out for in your ear”, “Hey ump how bout a warning. Watch out you don’t get killed”, etc. I quote it all the time. It was back when writers understood that the best dramas have a great sense of humor and aren’t just super-serious all the time. But I’m not sure that translates into what Schur does.
I could see MAYBE a miniseries. A short one. But I expect if Schur’s involved, it won’t have anything in common with the movie except Iowa and baseball ghosts. No baby boomer tension with their dads, no farm forclosure, no choking kid. A wacky workplace comedy like every one of his other shows. A farmer-turned-baseball-diamond-proprietor, his writer friend, dead ballplayers of various era, and some female and minority cast members, somehow. How do you get women into a show like this? And then an excuse for all the history jokes that Schur shows love to do.
and some female and minority cast members, somehow. total mystery how you’d work minority actors into a show about dead baseball players getting the opportunity to play that was denied them when they were alive. No sir, not a dang clue how you’d find space for a minority actor there.
A micro-mini series if you will.
It’s going to be really funny when Joe Morgan is one of dead ball players that come out of the corn.
Peacock and Paramount+ seem to be in a competition to see who can make the most TV shows based on movies people liked decades ago.
it’ll be Josh Lucas. though I’d go all indie with it and cast Kentucker Audley and Amy SeimetzHow do they stretch this out to a full series? And what do they do when Ty Cobb shows up and starts calling everybody racial slurs, is that a very special episode?Also: baseball is boring. Because of the pitching it has managed to become even more boring than hockey and soccer. That is all.
That would be a great idea for an episode. Ted Williams facing Roy Halladay and getting annoyed that the ABs go on forever and every pitch is a heater.
My hunch is that this version will feature Negro League players. I don’t know in what way, but making a show about the abject stupidity and injustice of segregation era baseball feels like a thing Schur would do.
rather have FireJoeMorgan.com start back up, but I’m guessing the option rights for this were slightly more lucrative.I don’t know. I haven’t seen them play.
mike schur needs to be stopped
Apparently I totally missed the boat on Field of Dreams popularity. I remember seeing it years and years ago, thought it was ok to good, nothing special. I’d see it referenced over the years, but no one was over the moon about it.But now its apparently like one of the best things ever. When did this happen? I watch a lot of sports too and when they did the Field of Dreams game last week, all the talk shows were all like “It’s like baseball use to be!” and I’m like “What? It was a fictional movie. How is this baseball from back in the day?”
Don’t get me wrong. If you like it, that’s fine. It’s cool to enjoy things. I’m just saying this popularity somehow caught me off guard.
How’s your relationship with your dad?
I was there for Field of Dreams popularity, and I hated it. It was schmaltzy horseshit from beginning to end, but everybody seemed determined to ignore that, and I started to hate everyone around me because they liked it. It’s actually why I decided to completely ignore This Is Us.
“It’s like baseball use to be!”Super-racist and full of cheaters, apparently
Say it ain’t so, dirtside!
“Like baseball used to be” as in it captures the rosy memory of watching baseball, probably with an emotionally loaded memory of your dad, while skipping the tedium that is a real-time experience of watching baseball.
It was always pretty beloved. It was a slow-burning/word of mouth hit (remember those?), a Best Picture Nominee, a future TV staple and “if you build it they will come” was instantly iconic. A classic crowd pleaser.
I understand Ray Liotta himself is baffled by its popularity though, so you’re certainly not alone.
Liotta doesn’t seem that baffled here:
Well, seems I was wrong. I heard on a podcast that he had kind of dismissed as “a ridiculous movie”, but all I can find is a comment from him that he’s never actually seen the finished film. Should have checked. Sorry, Ray!
nah, he kinda does.
Stay tuned for another fun chapter of “Things Ray Liotta Is Baffled By”
It seems to zero in on that huge demographic of men who like baseball and have daddy issues. Its a perfectly fine movie, I’d even say good. But the die hard fans tend to fall into that group really hard.
So if you have daddy issues you can either become a baseball player or start a grunge band.
It’s perfectly alright. If it’s on, I’ll watch it. As far as baseball movies go, though, I’d much, much rather watch Bull Durham or The Natural or Eight Men Out or the original Bad News Bears.
I’ve never seen it – being Australian, I have little to no interest in baseball – but it’s one of those films that got shown on TV in a revolving cycle every couple of months along with ‘A Few Good Men’ and fellow baseball flick ‘A League of Their Own’ when I was a kid, so I associate it with the kind of stuff you half-watch because it’s Sunday night and there’s nothing else on.
Ok, fine, so a guy builds a cricket field in the middle of his dingo patch. You on board now?
Simple answer is that it is the perfect Boomer nostalgia-fest and wish fulfillment. It’s like Napoleon Dynamite is for Mormon kids in Idaho and rural Utah. It pushes every single button of their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood: cold and remote fathers; only being able to connect with dad through sports; growing up rebelling against authority; reversing that course and selling out as they aged; worrying about ending up just like their parents with their own kids; the dread of their own mortality.Boomers loooooooooove this movie because it took them to a place where they could escape the present, recapture the past, and reassure themselves that every existential terror had an out clause, if only on celluloid. It’s big-screen therapy.As for me, I loved it more than anything else because I loved James Horner’s film scores.
There MUST be some involvement here from Joe Posnanski (the best sportswriter around these days.) He and Mike Schur host a podcast together, and Posnanski has been one of the leading voices in mainstream sports telling the stories of those Negro Leaguers whose incredible accomplishments were ignored by so much of the country in their heyday.Pos has written quite a bit on how Field of Dreams’ biggest misfire is the lack of Negro League players’ inclusion. A re-do where Josh Gibson, Bullet Rogan, Oscar Charleston and the rest get their due sounds bananas good, actually. I can live without the umpteenth depiction of Shoeless Joe Jackson as Simple Jack.
The original movie’s omission of the Negro Leagues is the main reason why I think a remake is not only warranted, but a necessity. Especially now that the Negro Leagues have been canonized as an official “major league”.
Feel like this show will somehow turn into an apology for the original film. Didn’t address segregation enough, white savior, etc.
Wait, is this another Walking Dead spinoff?
To further juice that IP goodness, have the whole thing on the show put together by Leslie Knope and you have your Parks & Rec multiverse!
Reunite Schur with a shirtless William Jackson Harper and I can promise this’ll do great.
This sounds absolutely tooth-rotting.
“The movie, while not especially serious, is also not known for being super funny…”Listen, Beulah.
Make it like a reality-game show: A number of American towns build baseball fields and the racist, hard-drinkin’, gamblin’ baseball ghosts will come to the “most sincere” baseball field.
“Is this heaven?”
Naw, it’s Sayreville!”
People who only know Schur from his TV work might not realize he is a massive massive fan of baseball.He shares a fantastic and meaningless podcast with Joe Posnanski where they talk about all things from deep-in-the-weeks sabermetrics to who would give the better hug between Mike Trout and Mookie Betts.I was literally listening to them talk about the Field of Dreams game when I came across this article. So I am all the way on board for this one.