A Kevin Costner Classic Is Being Remade As A Series
This Kevin Costner movie is about to become a series on streaming.
This article is more than 2 years old
In 1989, Kevin Costner starred in the classic fantasy drama Field of Dreams in which a ghostly voice famously tells his character “If you build it, he will come.” Apparently, Peacock is hoping if they rebuild it, the audience will come once more.
The word came today from Deadline that Peacock has given a straight-to-series order to Field of Dreams, based on the Kevin Costner-led film of the same name. Michael Schur – who The Office fans will remember as the shy and bizarre brother of Dwight (Rainn Wilson) – will write the series and act as executive producer. Joining Schur as co-executive producer will be Lawrence Gordon, who was a producer for the 1989 film.
It seems likely a lot of the thanks for the greenlight goes to an actual baseball game. Last Thursday, Fox Sports broadcast its own Field of Dreams baseball game with the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees facing off at a field in Dyersville, Iowa built — you guessed it — next to a cornfield. Players from both teams wore the throwback uniforms their counterparts from the 1920s would’ve worn. Kevin Costner himself was in attendance. He led the players onto the field and gave a speech, including reading lines from the film.
The White Sox came away the victors, with a score of nine to eight, but in the grand scheme of things there were those who won much bigger than the White Sox. Per CNBC, the viewership clocked in at around six million viewers, making it the most-watched MLB regular-season game on Fox Sports since 2005. Another big winner was Amazon. As Deadline reported the day after the game, the Kevin Costner-led Field of Dreams quickly reached the top of Amazon’s “Movers & Shakers” list in its Movies & TV section, with sales of the film in all formats shooting up astronomically.
Released in 1989 and based on the 1982 novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella, Field of Dreams stars Kevin Costner Iowa corn farmer Ray Kinsella. Ray hears the famous spectral voice telling him to “build it” while mulling over his estrangement from his dead father. Ray begins building the field, and soon the ghosts of dead baseball players including Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) begin appearing from the afterlife. Ray is soon joined by the reclusive author Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) as more and more people become able to see the legendary players in the field. While it didn’t bring home any statues, Field of Dreams was nominated for three Oscars at the 1990 Academy Awards, including for Best Picture, which it lost to Driving Miss Daisy.
When the Field of Dreams story goes from Kevin Costner movie to Peacock series, it won’t be the first show picked up by the service based on a Universal film. In June, Deadline reported that Peacock had ordered a live-action series based on the 2012 comedy Ted — Seth MacFarlane’s feature directorial debut — in which Mark Wahlberg stars as a thirty-something slacker whose teddy bear comes to life.
