Milo Ventimiglia Is Making A Hockey Drama Series For NBC
"This Is Us" may be wrapping up its six-season run this year, but that doesn't mean you've seen the last of Milo Ventimiglia on NBC. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ventimiglia and his production company, Divide Pictures, are developing a new drama called "Hometown Saints" and have a sold a script for it to the network.
"Hometown Saints" reportedly follows "Billy Riedell, a retired hockey player who struggles to figure out who he is now that his career is over." THR doesn't explicitly state that Ventimiglia is eyeing this as a series in which he would star (in addition to producing through Divide), but it's possible that is the case and he will play Riedell, who "ends up back in his hockey-crazed Minnesota hometown, reluctantly coaching a girl's high school team."
Derek Elliott and Grainne Godfree will write "Hometown Saints" and executive produce it with Ventimiglia and his longtime partner at Divide, Russ Cundiff. Deanna Harris will also produce for Divide. Elliott's credits include "Klein," which was featured on the 2019 Black List of Hollywood's best unproduced screenplays, as well as the 2020 computer-animated Scooby-Doo feature, "Scoob."
Godfree has a background in various superhero projects, having served as a writer on "Arrow" and "The Flash" and a producer and writer on DC's "Legends of Tomorrow." Outside the Arrowverse, she has done work as a consulting producer on "Secret Invasion," the upcoming Disney+ series from Marvel Studios, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman, and Kingsley Ben-Adir. She also has an adaptation of the YA book, "The Inheritance Games" (no relation to "The Hunger Games") pending at Amazon Studios.
Hometown Saints: The Network TV Mighty Ducks?
Having just reported on "The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers," my knee-jerk reaction to THR's description of "Hometown Saints" is that it sounds very similar to that show. In the past, Ventimiglia has been spotted in real life at Anaheim Ducks hockey games. Take that for what you will.
The first season of "Game Changers" also centered on a reluctant coach, Emilio Estevez's Gordon Bombay, being drawn back into hockey life — in this case, with younger kids instead of a high school girls team. Now, Josh Duhamel has been cast in the second season of "Game Changers" as a former NHL player who runs a hockey institute for kids. That, again, sounds similar to the description of Riedell as a "retired hockey player" in "Hometown Saints."
I probably just have "The Mighty Ducks" on the brain, and I'm sure that "Hometown Saints" will strike a different tone, one less Disneyfied and more dignified and "This Is Us"-like. Still, NBC already has a reimagined version of another '90s comedy favorite, "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," headed to its streaming service, Peacock, as a serious drama. Given what we know about that, the network TV drama equivalent of "The Mighty Ducks," starring Milo Ventimiglia, might be interesting.
We'll know more as "Hometown Saints" moves further along in its development at NBC.