Kyle Chandler Puts Kibosh on 'Friday Night Lights' Movie Talk

1:08 PM PST 12/6/2012 by Michael O'Connell

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Dampening creator Peter Berg's frequent mentions of a feature continuation, the man behind Coach Taylor says the series "ended exactly the right way."

Bill Records/NBC

As is the case with almost any defunct television series these days, there is a sizable percentage of Friday Night Lights fans who want to see the NBC series revisited as a film.

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Creator Peter Berg and showrunner Jason Katims have fueled the rumor with mentions of an in-progress script, a story inspired by the 2009 scandal surrounding football coach Mike Leach and an eager participant in star Connie Britton. The only missing piece (aside from financing) is star Kyle Chandler.

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Unfortunately, he might be a hard sell. Speaking with MTV News while promoting his turn in Zero Dark Thirty, the actor behind Coach Taylor says that he hasn't heard anything about a Friday Night Lights movie -- nor is he interested.

"My general attitude about Friday Night Lights is that it was a great movie with Billy Bob Thornton. And it was a great TV show," he said. "I never had more fun doing anything. … They ended it at exactly the right time and in exactly the right way."

Indeed, Friday Night Lights already has had a very long life. Originally based on the 1990 book by Berg's cousin H.G. Bissinger and later adapted to a feature starring Thornton, Friday Night Lights the series was on the air for five seasons. A then-unheard-of partnership between NBC and DirecTV saved the low-rated drama from cancellation early in its 76-episode run.

Chandler, who told MTV he still watches the show, maintained a grateful tone in all of his talk of Friday Night Lights. He called Berg "one of the more giving people he's met in his career" and brought up a frantic e-mail he'd gotten from his former boss when the Mitt Romney campaign co-opted Coach Taylor's mantra: "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose."