FX and Twentieth Television Announce ‘American Sports Story’ and ‘American Love Story’

FX and 20th Television have closed a deal for two “American Story” spinoff limited series from producers Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson: “American Sports Story” and “American Love Story.” Both limited series are produced by 20th Television and FX Productions.

“American Sports Story” is described as a scripted anthological limited series focusing on a prominent event involving a sports figure and re-examines it through the prism of today’s world, telling that story from multiple perspectives. The first installment of “American Sports Story” is based on the podcast “Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc.” from the Boston Globe and Wondery. The limited series charts the rise and fall of NFL superstar Aaron Hernandez and explores the connections of the disparate strands of his identity, his family, his career, his suicide, and their legacy in sports and American culture.

Stu Zicherman (“The Americans”) is the writer and executive producer and Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Alexis Martin Woodall and Brad Falchuk are executive producers. Hernan Lopez and Marshall Lewy of Wondery (“Dr. Death”) are executive producers alongside Linda Pizutti Henry and Ira Napoliello of The Boston Globe.

“American Love Story” is a scripted anthology series of sweeping true love stories that captured the world’s attention.  The first installment depicts the whirlwind courtship and marriage of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.  What started out as a beautiful union for the young couple, widely regarded as American royalty, began to fray under the stress of the relentless microscope and navel gaze of tabloid media. The pressures of their careers and rumored family discord ended with their tragic deaths when his private plane crashed into the ocean on a hazy summer night off the coast of Massachusetts.

Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson and Alexis Martin Woodall are executive producers of “American Love Story.”

Additionally, “Studio 54: American Crime Story” is currently in development as the potential fourth installment of the limited series franchise, “American Crime Story.”  The story tells the saga of Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager who in 1977 turned their midtown Manhattan disco into an international mecca of nightlife for the rich and famous and commoners alike—renowned for its lavish parties, music, sex and drugs.  With Rubell and Schrager’s meteoric rise came their epic fall less than three years later when the impresarios were convicted of tax fraud.