D’Arcy Carden and Abbi Jacobson have been drafted into A League of Their Own, an upcoming TV series from Amazon that reflects the popular 1992 film starring Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, Tom Hanks, and Rosie O’Donnell. The movie centered on a fictionalized account of a team from the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, using two sisters (Davis and Petty) as the central focus. It remains a fan-favorite more than 25 years later, and Tom Hanks’s delivery of “there’s no crying in baseball” has become one of the most iconic catch-phrases of any movie this side of The Princess Bride or Rocky. It does not appear that Carden and Jacobson will play characters who existed in the movie.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Per Collider, who first reported the news, the series will begin in 1943 and track the Rockford Peaches — a team from the league in question — from their founding through the rest of their history. Jacobson will write and produce the series, and will work with producers Will Graham (Mozart in the Jungle) and Field Trip Productions’s Hailey Wierengo.
Per the report, “Jacobson will play Carson, a married woman who leaves her home in the countryside to try out for the Peaches in the big city, where she links up with the confident, care-free and worldly Greta (Carden).”
In the original film, “as America’s stock of athletic young men is depleted during World War II, a professional all-female baseball league springs up in the Midwest, funded by publicity-hungry candy maker Walter Harvey (Garry Marshall). Competitive sisters Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) and Kit Keller (Lori Petty) spar with each other, scout Ernie Capadino (Jon Lovitz) and grumpy has-been coach Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) on their way to fame.”
Directed by the late Penny Marshall, the film earned more than $130 million at the domestic box office, from a budget a fraction of that size. You can see it now on Amazon Prime Video.
In 2012, A League of Their Own was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” That same year, dozens of former players of the AAGPBL reunited in New York to celebrate the film and the real women who inspired it. Events included a trip to Cooperstown for a special program at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, reminiscent of the film’s final scene depicting members of the AAGPBL and family coming together to witness the honoring of the Women’s Professional Baseball League. The reunion wrapped up with a game of softball held at Alliance Bank Stadium in nearby Syracuse.
Jacobson, the creator and star of Broad City (in which Carden has appeared), also voices Bean on Matt Groening’s animated series Disenchantment for Netflix. Carden is currently appearing in the final season of NBC’s The Good Place.
