Friday Night Lights: Exec Producer Signs for Final Season

Executive producer David Hudgins recently signed a new deal with Universal Media Studios that will keep him on Friday Night Lights through its final season.

Friday Night Lights (FNL) follows the world of high school football in a smalltown of Texas. The current cast includes Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton, Michael B. Jordan, Matt Lauria, Jurnee Smollett, Taylor Kitsch, Minka Kelly, Zach Gilford, Aimee Teegarden, Jesse Plemons, Drew Waters, and D.W Moffett.

The fourth season of the football drama is presently airing on NBC having already aired on DirecTV as part of a unique partnership. Production is currently underway on the show’s fifth and final season in Texas. The actors and crew have been told that they’re free to pursue other work when production wraps in June.

Hudgins has been serving as showrunner with Jason Katims and will stay with it. He left for awhile to create FOX’s cancelled Past Life series. When that show died an early death, he was free to return to FNL.

He told Variety, “I’ve had a great experience on the show… I love these characters, and when the chance came to come back and shepherd the series to its conclusion, it was too hard to pass up. Plus it shoots in Texas, which is where I’m from.

As part of a seven figure, two-year deal, Hudgins will help run FNL until it finishes next year and will also develop new projects for the studio. As a part of the FNL writing team, Hudgins has been nominated four years in a row for WGA Awards.

Season four of FNL is scheduled to finish airing on NBC on August 6th. DirecTV is expected to start airing season five in the fall.

ABC Family recently signed a deal to air all five seasons of FNL in repeats. The first four seasons will start airing on the cable channel in September.

Image courtesy NBC.

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