The successful Amazon streaming platform Prime Video unveils its latest original series, a spinoff of the documentary and movie “A League Of Their Own.” The new series will be an in-depth adaptation of the history behind women’s baseball and pay homage to the original documentary.
The new series will draw inspiration from the 1992 Penny Marshall movie, documentary, and first-hand account from former players. The Prime Video series will be widening the lens to create a story of an entire generation of women who dreamed of playing professional baseball inside and outside the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL).
The story will follow two of the main characters Max played by Chanté Adams and Carson played by Abbi Jacobson accompanied by an ensemble of various personalities. This series is historical following the paths of trailblazing women to the baseball field and will incorporate some comical elements like the 1992 movie.
The reboot series will offer a fresh take on this story by diving deeper into social issues during the 1940s and 1950s including the Labor Movement, Civil Rights Movement, and Women’s Rights Movement. This is relevant to Max’s storyline as she is turned away from tryouts for the All-American League due to racism which leads Max to forge her own path to play baseball.
The Prime Video series will also explore the social issues surrounding sexism that players face head-on like creating uniforms with shorter skirts to spark interest for spectators and receiving aggravated suggestions from the coach. Though Carson and Max have a parallel storyline on the field, they become friends off the field finding mutual respect among each other.
Creating a series to tell this story can create a broader scope to tell the story with a fresh perspective on the history of women’s sports and social issues of the time. The story behind “A League Of Their Own” started as stories passed down to former founding players’ friends and family, including Helen Candaele and Dottie Collins. Candaele made history by winning the 1945 batting title and would recall her friendship with her teammate Dottie Collin.
One of Helen’s sons, Kelly Candaele, worked with Kim Wilson to co-produce a documentary in 1987titled “A League Of Their Own” using unique sources for the film. The project collected two hours of footage recovered from former baseball players’ personal archives and the National Archives under searches for related terms like ”newsreel” and “baseball.” Of the two hours of video footage, only eight were used for the 27-minute documentary.
Wilson and Candaele showed a trailer for the documentary at the PBS station in L.A. landing a broadcasting deal that helped complete the documentary and provided post-production editing costs. This deal also helped fund Candaele and Wilson’s travel to the AAGPBL reunion in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
PBS broadcasted the documentary along with all of their U.S. affiliates and was successful in gaining more attention with affiliated interviews following the premiere. The fanfare surrounding the documentary caught the attention of the late director Penny Marshall.
Marshall contacted Candaele to be invited to her birthday party, and shortly after they started the discussion of creating a film based on the documentary. One of the early notes that would influence the movie is that in Hollywood, no baseball movie is really about the sport.
This made Candaele pivot to focusing the story on the two sisters that are pitcher and catcher to create more direct conflict for the movie plot. This was also inspired by Helen Candaele and her sister Margaret who both played together on some teams for the first women’s professional baseball league. KellyCandaele credits his collaborators for shifting the film from his vision with an edgy tone to comical.
It seems that the new Prime Video series will be an adaptation of both the documentary and 1992 film.The new series seems like it will be shaped more into the original edgy vision proposed by Candaelewhile maintaining some of the comicalelements from the 1992 movie. “A League Of Their Own” serieswill be available on Prime Video starting August 12, 2022.