Peter Berg Teases Peacock's New Friday Night Lights: "It's a Complete Reinvention..."
A revamp of the acclaimed football drama was announced in late 2024.
Peacock's upcoming revival of Friday Night Lights will be "a complete reinvention of the show," Peter Berg teased in a recent interview with Esquire. Announced in late 2024, the project marks the third adaptation of H.G. Bissinger's 19990 non-fiction novel, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream.
Berg directed and co-wrote the 2004 film adaptation (now available to own from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment) before developing the property into the acclaimed TV series, which ran on NBC for a total of 76 episodes across five seasons between 2006 and 2011. The football-centric drama was nominated for eight Primetime Emmys, ultimately winning two: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Kyle Chandler) and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (Jason Katims).
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Peter Berg teases new Friday Night Lights coming to Peacock
"We want to do it with a whole new cast, but obviously there’ll be football in it," teased Berg, who is executive-producing the project alongside Brian Grazer and Kristen Zolner. "But the original show was done a long time ago. There were no cell phones. No social media. It was a very different world, and yet the same values still exist, and the same family dynamics exist."
He continued: "Football’s only grown in its relevance in communities all over the country. So the core themes of Friday Night Lights—that were revealed by Buzz Bissinger when he wrote the book — are very much present. There’s just so many new elements, so we want to look at that. And if certain cast members come back, have appearances, that’s great. But if Friday Night Lights works, it’ll be because it works as a reinvention."
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Berg isn't wrong about football's popularity in the United States. According to a Gallup poll from early 2024, it remains the biggest sport in the country, with 41 percent of the adult American population naming it as their favorite competitive past time (sorry, baseball). This year's Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs was the most-watched in history, garnering over 127 million viewers.
Check out the movie that started it all — the 2004 film adaptation of Friday Night Lights is now available to own from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment!
