You’re Killing Me, Smalls! ‘The Sandlot’ Prequel is Underway

25 years after the original, 20th Century Fox is bringing back the nostalgia of the cult classic baseball movie.

We’ve been given two sequels to the beloved 1993 cult film The Sandlot, but now it’s time to find out what happened before Scotty Smalls moved to Los Angeles. Variety reports that 20th Century Fox has a prequel to The Sandlot in the works. The original director, David Mickey Evans, is on board, as well as a new writer, Austin Reynolds.

The Sandlot has been in the news more than expected this year, as April marked the official 25-year anniversary of the film’s release. It was played in select theaters, and the original cast reunited to do a variety of interviews reminiscing on how much fun they had and how people occasionally yell “Yeah Yeah” at Marty York to this day.

With the announcement being so fresh, there isn’t anything related to the plot or casting in talks right now. Which, of course, leaves me with some questions. Let’s get started.

To recap, The Sandlot is about a young boy, Scotty Smalls, who moves to Los Angeles in 1962. He wants to play on the local sandlot baseball team but is first taught how to play by Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez after the other kids realize that Smalls can’t play the game to save his life.

The team gets into all sorts of misadventures like kissing a lifeguard after fake drowning, playing a game against their rival team, vomiting profusely at a local fair, and dealing with “The Beast,” a giant dog that lives beyond the fences of the sandlot, after Smalls loses his stepdad’s baseball signed by Babe Ruth.

With the actors in the movie being in their early teen years at the time of the release, that puts them now in the age range of 30-40 years old. For obvious reasons, there’s no way that the original actors can play the kids. Some cameos could be in order, which would be really fun for fans of the original. But, if the storyline has anything to do with the sandlot crew, there’s going to be some serious recasting going on.

With the plot not being revealed either, most of the kids may not even be in the remake. I’m not sure what kind of direction they’d be going in if the kids weren’t involved, though. Maybe an origin story for Mr. Mertle about his time as a professional baseball player for the New York Yankees? But again, in regards to casting, current James Earl Jones probably won’t be able to play a younger version of his 1993 self.

It would also be cool to see an origin story for the kids. Friendships have to start somewhere, and I’d love to see how all of the kids of the sandlot team came to be friends. Or, how did they even come to be the sandlot team? Did they immediately click because of their love of baseball, or did some of them start off as rivals? The possibilities are endless when it comes to what the neighborhood was like before we were introduced to it through Smalls.

Regardless of what the plot is or how the casting turns out, fans can still experience some sort of nostalgia as they’re taken back to the days of The Sandlot. Besides, this prequel will only give you an excuse to go ahead and rewatch the original. Sit down with a bowl of popcorn and relive the horrors of the effects of tobacco that your younger self once was traumatized by.

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