"The Sandlot" Is Returning As A TV Series Starring The Original Cast From The Movie
ABC-‘ The original cast of “The Sandlot” is set to return for a sequel to classic film, but this time adapted for television. “The Sandlot” director David Mickey Evans revealed during a podcast interview that he recently sold a 2-season sequel to a streaming service.
“I just sold a Sandlot television show,” Evans said in an interview with The Rain Delay podcast. “We’re about to get an order for the first two seasons.” While Evans wouldn’t name the streaming service that will broadcast the reboot, he also said, “It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out right now.” the film was set in 1962, the TV series will take place 22 years in 1984.
As someone that puts The Sandlot in his personal Top 50 movies, I want to be excited about a TV series that brings back the entire cast the old flick and shows us the progression from being kids with not a care in the world outside of where to find their next baseball to real life getting it’s hooks into them and trying to make ends meet while raising the next Sandlot crew. I think you can take Friday Night Lights as a pretty decent example of how to turn a beloved movie into a great TV show and having the original cast still alive ropes in people like me that are suckers for nostalgia.
I want to see if Benny The Jet was still such a great friend while living the good life in The Show riding the wave as the Dodgers competed for titles and all the hysteria around Fernandomania. Did Smalls get help becoming the Dodgers radio guy from Vin Scully or did Vin loathe his ass because he could tell Smalls didn’t know shit about baseball until he was like 12? Was The Great Hambino a legend for local Californian wrestling circuits or did he make it big time and headline cards against Hulk Hogan, Andre The Giant, and King Kong Bundy? I don’t imagine we’d be seeing much of Squints and Wendy Peffercorn since they likely spent most of their time fucking like rabbits to make their litter of 9 kids. Same for DeNunez because he was likely getting teed off on at Triple A since he could never crack The Bigs and Bertram getting lost in the sauce during the 60s before ending up as a homeless person in San Francisco. I do hope we see James Earl Jones, though. He already is locked in to play his role as Mufasa in the live action version of Lion King, appears to be playing King Jaffe Joffer again in Coming To America 2, and got some of that Disney Star Wars money by bringing back Darth Vader in Rogue One. If Big Role James can land yet ANOTHER big payday to act as a character he played in a classic more than 25 years ago thanks to Hollywood’s raging hard-on for reboots, you have to tip your cap to him, no matter how mean of a fuck Mr. Mertle may have been, which was probably justified based on him being screwed over by baseball’s color barrier.
However if the show sucks because all the actors from the movie haven’t been in anything noteworthy “The Sandlot” for a reason, I’ll be fine with it too. They already shit on the legacy of the original with the two movie sequels and since the show will be on a streaming network, I don’t have to be worried about my childhood being crushed every time a commercial for the trainwreck Sandlot TV show is played. If the show is good, I’ll watch it. If it sucks, I can just ignore it like every other shitty show on Netflix/Hulu/etc. To be honest, I still haven’t mentally recovered from finding out The Sandlot movie was shot in Utah, anyway.