The NBCUniversal streamer has abruptly stopped the relaunch of Kevin Costner’s classic baseball movie series, Deadline has confirmed. The play, which originated with The Good Place creator Michael Schur, film producer Lawrence Gordon and Universal TV, received direct orders for the series in August 2021. Universal TV now buys the series on other broadcasters and platforms. It is believed that the series has started casting and is one month away from production with seven hour scripts ready to start. As recently announced, filming was scheduled to take place throughout Iowa, which financially supports the series, as well as in Boston, Minneapolis and Los Angeles. Written by Schur, the series was to redefine the mix of family, baseball, Iowa and magic that made the film so enduring and beloved. The pick-up came amid rising popularity for the 1989 film starring Kevin Costner after the baseball game “Field of Dreams” last summer between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox, which premiered on primetime at Fox. It was Major League Baseball’s regular-season television broadcast with the most viewers on any network since 2005, according to Nielsen, and the game with the most Fox regular-season broadcasts in its history. Schur was to take on the executive production of the series through the Fremulon banner, along with Gordon for The Gordon Company, David Miner and former EP The Good Place Morgan Sackett. The 1989 sports fantasy Field of Dreams was written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson and is based on WP Kinsella 1982 novel Shoeless Joe. Costner starred as a farmer building a baseball field on his Iowa field that captures the ghosts of baseball legends. Variety was the first to broadcast the news.
