Nobody could ever accuse Jason Bateman of being idle, especially with the announcement of his latest post-Ozark Netflix project, Daddy Ball (working title), which was recently subject to an all-out bidding war.
The eight-part limited series, adapted from David Gauvey Herbert’s 2021 Esquire magazine article of the same name, will count Bateman as both a leading man and its director. And by all accounts, we’re in for a deliciously dark comedy occupying the same airspace as Netflix’s breakout release of this year: Beef starring Steven Yuen and Ali Wong.
To make a long and unbelievably story short — and without giving too much away — Herbert’s article starts the way most dad-on-ad youth sports rivalries do. The key difference here, though, involves the complicated pasts of both fathers, and said rivalry’s eventual escalation.
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Soon enough, similar to Beef, the seemingly innocuous Little League baseball grudge between Bobby Sanfilippo and John Reardon takes on an entire life of its own with claims of stalking, corrupt cops, and even — get this — mob connections.
“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,” explains Mike Fleming Jr of Deadline.
“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.”
Jason Bateman has also signed on to co-executive produce alongside Michael Costigan and Roxie Rodriguez on behalf of Aggregate; with David Gauvey Herbert and David Klawans on board to executive produce as well.
But as alluded to earlier, Daddy Ball (working title) isn’t the sole Netflix collaboration on the docket for Jason Bateman…
Everybody’s favourite Arrested Development alum first opted to further his longstanding (and extremely fruitful) creative partnership with the streaming giant by signing onto the thriller Carry On, helmed by Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows, Jungle Cruise, Black Adam).
Co-starring alongside Kingsman franchise face Taron Egerton, Bateman’s forthcoming film focuses on a young TSA agent who gets blackmailed by a mysterious traveller into letting a dangerous package slip through security.
Then there’s the other thriller, which Bateman will actually direct but not appear onscreen for, titled Dark Wire. Adapted from the yet-to-be-published book of the same name penned by Vice Motherboard journalist Joseph Cox, it’ll uncover the true story of how the FBI established a fake telecommunications company, and eventually became the phone service providers to the world’s most notorious gangs.
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Finally, we arrive to a non-Netflix joint in The Pinkerton. This feature-length undertaking has been described as a “supernatural revenge western-hybrid,” and was acquired by both Warner Bros and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot two years ago.
The plot is based on the real-life detective agency and private security company from the 1850s established in the US by Scotsman Allan Pinkerton — a former deputy sheriff in Illinois. Pinkerton’s founder achieved mainstream recognition when he claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln. Jason Bateman is also getting behind the camera for this one.
Keep an eye out for key updates on Netflix’s Daddy Ball (working title) starring and directed by Jason Bateman here.
