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FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS Star Hopes Reboot’s Cast Experiences This
By Movieguide® Contributor
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS is getting a reboot, and Connie Britton, who starred in the 2004 movie and series that ran from 2006-2011, recently reflected on her time with the franchise.
“In the film, there was very little for me to do and even less so by the time it came out — whatever I had done was mostly on the cutting-room floor,” she told Parade. “And so when the TV show came around, I said, ‘No, thank you.’ I was really hoping for something more for myself than playing sort of the fly-on-the-wall wife character in a football show.”
Despite originally not wanting to be in the series, she changed her mind after a conversation with creator Peter Berg.
“[Berg was] very persuasive, I really have to say,” she admitted. “I worked pretty tirelessly with Pete, but then also with Jason Katims, who came in to run the show, really sort of standing up for the woman’s voice in that community, in that world.”
As of now, Britton doesn’t plan to join the reboot, saying its “barely on my radar.”
She does however look back fondly on her time in the first version of the series, and she wishes the same success for the new cast.
“There was an alignment that happened in that show around what we were trying to do and how we were trying to do it,” she explained. “And the collaboration was just, from the top down, this beautiful, linear thing. And so I will hope for [the new cast] that they can find a sense of discovery there in terms of what they’re committing to and trying to accomplish.”
Part of Movieguide®’s review for FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS movie (2004) reads:
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, based on an award-winning sports book, focuses on the 1988 season of the Permian High School Panthers in Odessa, located in West Texas. Everyone in the town expects the team to win the Texas State Championship for the sixth time, mostly because its star running back, Boobie Miles, is one of the hottest professional football prospects in the United States. An unexpected accident, however, changes the fortunes of Boobie and the team, which is led by its intense, clean-spoken coach, Gary Gaines. Besides Boobie, the movie also focuses on several other players trying to overcome other troubles.
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS gets off to a slow, somewhat confusing and unappealing start. Once the story’s first major twist story occurs, however, the movie picks up intensity and provides more compelling drama. It also becomes more theologically positive. Billy Bob Thornton’s wonderful redemptive performance as the coach helps a lot. Even so, the movie’s redemptive, implied Christian ending barely overcomes its Romantic worldview of sports and family life. Also, the movie’s beginning contains teenage drinking, brief sexual content and disturbing scenes between one father and his son. The movie also contains plenty of foul language.
The new series will land on Peacock in 2025 or 2026.
“This fresh take on the story will be set in the wake of a devastating hurricane, following a rag-tag high school football team and their damaged, interim coach as they make an unlikely bid for a Texas High School State Championship, helping inspire a small town in the process,” NBC’s synopsis reads.
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