“A League of Their Own” is getting another chance on the diamond, but the crew will only be playing a half-game. The Prime Video TV adaptation of the beloved film has been renewed for a second season — but it will be the series’ last, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
What’s more, the show from “Broad City’s” Abbi Jacobson and Will Graham, who also serves as showrunner on Amazon’s “Daisy Jones & The Six” limited series, will receive an abbreviated run of only four hourlong episodes; the first season, which released all at once on August 12, 2022, consists of eight. Amazon will reportedly bill the batch of episodes as a “limited series,” despite following up and concluding the events of the initial season.
Amazon declined to comment on the report to IndieWire.
News of the shortened final season comes hours after Graham tweeted a defense of the show on Monday, refuting journalists who referred to the series as “niche.”
“The one thing I’ll say at this moment: ‘A League Of Their Own’ is not a small or niche show. The audience is domestic, but our understanding is that it’s very big. It has outperformed many other shows that have been renewed,” Graham wrote on Twitter. “Journalists, please stop reinforcing the narrative that POC/Queer shows are inherently niche or small if you don’t have data. That narrative is racist and homophobic and all the other stuff. Please cover these things with some thought and care.”
The half-cancellation, half-renewal of “A League of Their Own” is reportedly the result of months of negotiations between Graham and Jacobson with Amazon and Sony Pictures Television, which produces the series. The negotiations reportedly resulted in lowered licensing fees, completely new deals for the cast, and other measures to cut the budget of the show down. Amazon doesn’t release viewership figures for its series, so it’s unclear how the show performed, but the company hasn’t been shy about spending big bucks on shows, such as the $465 million budget “The Rings of Power” received.
The “League of Their Own” series is a reimagining of the original 1992 film by Penny Marshall. Like that film — which featured Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, and Rosie O’Donnell — the series is a fictionalized account of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, a baseball league that started during World War II when most men went off to war. The show follows a new set of characters and athletes in the league, with a focus on telling the stories of queer women in the league and the Black women barred from competing.
Jacobson leads the series as Carson Shaw, a catcher for the league’s Rockford Peaches who develops an affair with her teammate Greta (D’Arcy Carden). Chanté Adams also stars as Maxine Chapman, a Black lesbian woman and aspiring baseball player. The series cast also included Gbemisola Ikumelo, Roberta Colindrez, Kelly McCormack, Priscilla Delgado, Molly Ephraim, Melanie Field, Kate Berlant, and Nick Offerman as the coach of the Peaches.
“A League of Their Own” received mixed reviews when it originally premiered last year, with several critics calling the series messy but praising its ambition. IndieWire’s Ben Travers wrote in his review that the series “not only takes a massive swing by uncoupling from the movie’s familiar beats, but Jacobson and Graham understand why their story deserves to be tied to this particular piece of I.P.”
In an interview with IndieWire this January, series star Carden spoke about her desire to return to the show’s baseball field, as well as her frustration regarding the long wait for an announcement.
“How can it still be this long [and no Season 2 renewal]? I don’t have any updates, other than the way the fans are still being so active on social media with hashtagging,” Carden told IndieWire. “It almost feels like it’s a part-time job. It’s amazing. There is no shortage of #RenewALOTO. Every day there’s thousands of tweets about it and it’s really just beyond our wildest dreams and it’s really so nice people would care enough to ask me that question, let alone tweet it a million times. It’s really lovely and the cast and I, we just want to get back on that damn baseball field and shoot Season 2.”
Source: Read Full Article