Peter Berg's beloved TV series Friday Night Lights ends this week, capping its rollercoaster five-season run with an Emmy nomination and a fantastic oral history of the show by its creators and stars over at Grantland. But this might not be the end for FNL, if, as reports say, Berg and Co. are trying to get another Friday Night Lights movie off the ground, to pick up where the small-screen storyline left off.
The movie hubbub began when Grantland editor (and famed sports guy) Bill Simmons tweeted yesterday, "PS: We didn't put it in the oral history, but Peter Berg told us he wants to do a FNL movie with Chandler/Britton off the final episode."
TVline followed up with a rep from Universal, who said that no Friday Night Lights film is currently in the works. But Friday Night Lights is nothing if not a scrappy property; fan passion helped keep it on the air through network changes, after all, and series stars like Adrianne Palicki, Aimee Teegarden, and Taylor Kitsch have risen since being on the show.
Of course, there already is a Friday Night Lights movie, which Berg also directed -- the original 2004 film starring Billy Bob Thornton -- which was based on the nonfiction book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream, about the 1988 Permian High School Panthers football team in Odessa, Texas.
But Berg's Friday Night Lights 2.0 film (reboot? remake? spin-off?) would reportedly follow series lead Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and his wife Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) after the events of tonight's finale on NBC. So chime in, fans: Is it a good idea for Berg & Co. to continue their Friday Night Lights story further on the big screen, or is it better left to end with some bittersweet closure in tonight's finale?