‘The Bad News Bears’ Comedy With Female Lead In Works At CBS From Corey Nickerson, Kapital & TrillTV

EXCLUSIVE: A beloved title from Paramount’s movie library is eying a TV comeback. CBS is developing The Bad News Bears, a single-camera comedy based on the 1976 movie which starred Walter Matthau as an alcoholic ex-baseball pitcher who becomes a coach for a youth baseball team of misfit players.

Written by Corey Nickerson (black-ish), the new TV take, from Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment and Wendi Trilling’s TrillTV, is rebooting the original premise. In the CBS version, a down-on-her-luck divorced mom coaches a team of misfits in a cutthroat Little League.

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The project will weave in personal experiences from Nickerson who coached her son’s baseball team. She executive produces with Kaplan and Melanie Frankel from Kapital and Trilling via TrillTV. Kevin Marco oversees for Kapital.

CBS Studios, where Nickerson has been under an overall deal, is the studio. This marks the latest collaboration between units from the two sides of the merged Paramount Global.

The original The Bad News Bears movie, directed by Michael Ritchie and written by Bill Lancaster, was followed by two sequels, 1978’s The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training and 1979’s The Bad News Bears Go To Japan. There was also a 2005 remake directed by Richard Linklater and starring Billy Bob Thornton.

This would be the second Bad News Bears TV series; a sitcom based on the original movie aired on CBS for two seasons from 1979-80, with Jack Warden as the coach.

Kapital has been interested in the arena and previously produced Cullen brothers’ 2013 single-camera ABC comedy series Back In the Game, which starred Maggie Lawson as a divorced mom who coaches son’s team of athletic misfits with help from her loutish ex-minor league manager dad, played by James Caan.

At CBS, Kapital and TrillTV have hit comedy series The Neighborhood, now in its fifth season. The Bad News Bears is Kapital’s second project in development at CBS this season based on famous IP, joining drama Watson.

Nickerson served as an executive producer on ABC’s black-ish. She co-created with Fresh off The Boat and Don’t Trust the B— creator Nahnatchka Khan the Fox comedy pilot Fatrick and served as a co-executive producer on Don’t Trust the B—. Her credits also include Scrubs and My Boys. Nickerson is repped by CAA and Bloom Hergott Diemer.

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