Finally. Fort Worth’s Westside Little League All-Stars are slated for the big screen

After some scaling back and re-tooling, one of the most famous sports stories in Fort Worth’s history will soon be a Hollywood motion picture.

“You Gotta Believe,” about the 2002 Fort Worth Westside All-Star baseball team that reached the Little League World Series is currently being filmed ... mostly in Toronto.

If you must, blame Canada.

This is a Fort Worth-centric story about Fort Worth people, but it’s much less expensive to film north of the border. Filming locations in Fort Worth could include downtown, the Stockyards and the Westside Little League fields.

According to people familiar with the production, the plan is to have the film completed by the end of January and the film in theaters by the start of the 2023 baseball season. There are, however, growing fears that an expected actor’s strike will delay production.

Many of the same people who converted Jim Dent’s best-selling book, “12 Mighty Orphans” into a movie are involved in this current production about the baseball team that “won” the LLWS without actually winning it.

Actor Luke Wilson, who was the lead in “12 Mighty Orphans,” will play Bobby Ratliff, whose son, Robert, was a member of the Westside team.

Bobby Ratliff was a fixture at all of the Westside games despite the fact he was dealing with cancer. He died the following May, in 2003. Much of the film will focus on Robert’s relationship with his dad.

Actor Greg Kinnear will play the role of head coach Jon Kelly, a current Fort Worth resident who has been pushing for this story to be made into a film for years.

“It really means a lot to me,” Kelly said in a phone interview. “I think the cast that they assembled is really good for this project. It will present our team in a really good light.”

Also cast in the movie include Sarah Gadon, and Molly Parker; Parker had prominent roles in the series “Deadwood” and “House of Cards,” among a long list of other credits. Most of the young people who play the parts of the players are from Canada.

“12 Mighty Orphans” director Ty Roberts is directing “You Gotta Believe;” Houston Hill, who co-wrote and served as a co-producer of “12 Mighty Orphans” serves in similar roles for “You Gotta Believe.”

The movie was originally pitched around a script written by Dallas-native Lane Garrison in 2021. Because of the current writer’s strike, Garrison is unable to work on the current production.

At the time of the original pitch and presentation to potential investors, the hope was to have a similar budget and scale as “12 Mighty Orphans,” and to shoot the entire film in Fort Worth.

As is often the case with these pricey projects, money changed things. According to people familiar with this venture, the Fort Worth Film Commission didn’t have quite the amount of money to aid in funding this project.

Expect a few tweaks to the original script to include the stories of more of the players, but the main emphasis will be on the Ratliff father-son story.

According to the description of the film by IMBD (Internet Movie Data Base), the movie is about “A Little League baseball team of misfits dedicate their season to a player’s dying father. In doing so, they accomplish the impossible by reaching the World Series finals in a game that became an ESPN instant classic.”

“Misfits” is a stretch. The 2002 Westside All-Stars were your standard group of pre-teen boys having summer fun before life started to get more complicated, i.e. school, girls, etc.

“They accomplish the impossible.” Not sure about impossible, but the 2002 Westside All-Stars making Williamsport, Pa. was unlikely. The team faced elimination 11 times to reach the World Series, and won all 11.

They were the first team from Fort Worth to make the LLWS since 1960.

“A game that became an ESPN instant classic.” This is true.

In the semifinals, Fort Worth Westside lost to the team from Louisville, Ky., 2-1, in 11 innings. Both starting pitchers had no-hitters through six innings.

Fort Worth Westside pitcher Walker Kelly, who would go on to play for TCU, struckout 21 batters. The game lasted 3 hours and 10 minutes, one minute short of the record set in 1988.

The team returned to Fort Worth as celebrities.

Many of the players remain in touch, and nearly all of them participated in a 20-year reunion last summer on the fields where they played out story that is now becoming officially becoming a Hollywood movie.