Jason Bateman has found his next project.
According to Deadline, Bateman will star and direct in the television adaptation of Daddy Ball, a 2021 Esquire magazine article by David Gauvey Herbert detailing a rivalry between two fathers set in the world of youth sports.
Deadline reports a bidding war took place for rights to dark comedy series, with “eight offers on the table.” Yet, Netflix and Bateman’s production company Aggregate prevailed and won the bid.
Daddy Ball details a heated conflict between two Long Island fathers: Bobby Sanfilippo and John Reardon. What starts as a minor confrontation between the fathers spirals out of control, with both men taking a youth sports rivalry way too far.
“It starts in the world of Little League baseball and expands into a Beef-like war between two small-time criminal fathers,” Deadline reports. “Both Sanfilippo and Reardon have rap sheets of their own, but what went down in the summer of 2012 at Baseball Heaven will define them and their families forever. Stalking claims, threatening text messages, and an unwarranted arrest later at the heart of it all, it’s a story about the lengths fathers will go for their sons.”
Bateman, Roxie Rodriguez, and Michael Costigan will co-executive produce Daddy Ball for Aggregate, with David Flawans as a producer.
Bateman and Netflix previously collaborated on Ozark, the Emmy Award-winning crime drama about a family who serves as money launderers for the Mexican drug cartel. Bateman won an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series in 2019. Other Netflix projects involving Bateman include Arrested Development and Florida Man, the latter involving the 54-year-old actor as an executive producer.
Currently, Herbert has a few additional articles being developed as TV series, including “The Ballad of Ron & Dorinda,” “Boss of the Beach,” and “Camp Shane.”
