Jason Bateman to Direct and Star in Netflix Series About Rival Baseball Dads

Jason Bateman has left the Ozarks and is now taking it to the diamond. According to Deadline, the 54-year-old actor, producer and director will direct and star in a new Netflix limited series about two baseball dads who are feuding against each other. It's based on the 2021 Esquire magazine article called Daddy Ball, but the series will have a different title. Bateman, Michael Costigan and Roxie Rodriguez will be co-executive producers for Aggregate, while David Herbert and David Klawans will be executive producers. The new series will be eight episodes long. 

The magazine article is about a man named Bobby Sanfilippo who got involved in a travel baseball feud with John Reardon. The two men, who have complicated pasts, got into a battle in the summer of 2012 at Baseball Haven, which included stalking claims, threatening text masses and unwarranted arrest. Things were so bad that Reardon was called "a Suffolk County Steinbrenner," and "seriously sick" by the tabloids. 

This is Batemant's first Netflix project since Ozark ended last year. The show was a major success as it won four Primetime Emmy Awards. Bateman was nominated multiple times for his role as Marty Byrde and won an Emmy in 2019 for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series. 

"It felt really good to finish something that we all worked so hard to try to do in a somewhat specific and precise way," Bateman told Variety when asked about Ozark ending. "I'd like to think everybody got pretty close to the ambitious target we were looking to hit with the show, but I also realize that it gets progressively harder to end on a high note the longer you stay. You're bound to plank it eventually."

Bateman was also asked if he had a plan for how he wanted Ozark to end. "It wasn't mapped out at all," he said. "One of the advantages of doing something without a predetermined ending is you can react to the actors and the characters and the audience and see what storylines and what characters are getting attention and which ones aren't working. Then you adjust accordingly.

Bateman is no stranger to starring in sports-related projects. One of his first films was Teen Wolf Too and he played a college boxer. Bateman followed that up by starring in the football film Necessary Roughness and then played the memorable Pepper Brooks in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Most recently, Bateman played a Nike executive in the sports drama film Air.