Start practicing your triple deke, because Disney’s family-friendly hockey franchise The Mighty Ducks is headed back to the screen.
Disney has confirmed plans for a new, live-action The Mighty Ducks series that will premiere later this year on streaming service Disney+.
Cast and Plot
The series will star Gilmore Girls actress Lauren Graham and Good Boys actor Brady Noon, and will be shot in Vancouver.
The Mighty Ducks will be set years after the original films, and follow 12-year-old hockey player Evan (Noon), who gets cut from the Mighty Ducks squad and — with some help from his mother (Graham) — decides to form a new team of hockey-playing misfits. The series’ premise suggests that, after all the team’s success in the movie franchise, the Mighty Ducks has gone from being a bunch of scrappy outcasts to a highly competitive, cutthroat youth hockey team — just the sort of organization the Mighty Ducks often found themselves striving to beat in the original 1992 film.
The series will unfold across 10 episodes, and it’s uncertain whether Disney plans to make it a continuing series or a one-and-done story.
Graham, who also serves as an executive producer on the series, is best known for playing Lorelai Gilmore on the long-running drama series Gilmore Girls. She also played a featured role on all six seasons of NBC’s Parenthood series.
Disney’s The Mighty Ducks movie premiered in 1992 and cast Emilio Estevez as a former hockey standout who has made a name for himself as a win-at-all-costs attorney. When he gets into trouble, a judge sentences him to coach a youth hockey team filled with misfits. He ends up rediscovering his love for the game and inspiring the underdog team to go the distance against their ultra-competitive rivals.
The film spawned two sequels, as well as an animated series, and even led to the creation of a team in the National Hockey League, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. The three live-action films featured early, on-screen performances for several now-prominent actors, including Joshua Jackson, Elden Henson, and Kenan Thompson.
Steve Brill, who created, wrote, and served as an executive producer on all three films, will executive produce the new Mighty Ducks series for Disney+. Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, who served as producers on The King of Queens series and co-wrote the 2004 comedy 13 Going On 30 will serve as co-creators and co-showrunners on the new series.
