FX Confirms American Sports Story Will Focus on NFL Star Aaron Hernandez

Having found a lot of success with American Horror Story and American Crime Story, FX is moving in to another US-centric narrative to tell with the upcoming American Sports Story. Like the later of those two shows it will be based on real-life events, with FX boss John Landgraf confirming at today's Television Critics Association press tour that the first season will focus on former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez. Landgraf confirmed that " a fairly complete set of scripts" have been written for the show but no production date has been penciled in. Another spinoff, American Love Story, is also in the works.

Stu Zicherman (Alaska Daily, The Shrink Next Door) is executive producing the series which is based on  the Wondery & Boston Globe podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc. A Tight end on the field, Hernandez played football at the University of Florida where he won a National Championship in 2008. He would go on to be drafted by the New England Patriots in the fourth round, but had a tough time due to off the field conduct including drug use. Hernandez would play three seasons on the team, playing in Super Bowl XLVI, which the Patriots lost to the Giants. 

His off the field antics eventually got him cut from the team, where he had few friends anyway. Hernandez was sought for questioning in connection with multiple shootings and homicides, and was eventually arrested and charged with first-degree murder in 2013 for the shooting death of friend Odin Lloyd. He was eventually found guilty and given a life sentence in 2015 and died by suicide while in prison in 2017.

An official logline for the series reads: ""The limited series charts the rise and fall of NFL superstar Aaron Hernandez and explores the connections of the disparate strands of his identity, his family, his career, his suicide, and their legacy in sports and American culture."

A fourth season of American Crime Story is also in the works for FX but no time table or subject has been pinpointed just yet.

(Cover Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)