Based on the best-selling book by H. G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights chronicles the 1988 season of the Permian High School Panthers of Odessa, Texas, the most successful football team in the state's history. For Coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton), it's a season filled with immense pressure as he tries to drive his team to the championship after failing to do so the previous two years.

Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner) is a regular guy with a dead-end job content with coasting his way through life until his daughter, Molly (Madeline Carroll), sets off a chain of events that results in a presidential election coming down to a single vote—Bud's. All hell breaks loose when political operatives from both parties, including the incumbent president (Kelsey Grammar) and the Democrat challenger (Dennis Hopper), swarm his hometown to vie for the winning vote.

Bertram Pincas (Ricky Gervais), a socially- challenged New York City dentist, emerges from a routine colonoscopy with the uncanny ability to see and speak to the dead. When word of his ability gets out in the spirit community of his ability, he becomes the go-to- guy for every ghost with unfinished bisinessbusiness. One such ghost is Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), who is determined to stop a relationship involving his widow, Gwen (Tea Leoni), and so he seeks Bertram’'s help in the matter.

In the year 2040, the pioneering research vessel Event Horizon vanishes without a trace. Seven years later, it suddenly appears in orbit around Neptune, and the United States Aerospace Command sends out a rescue crew headed by Captain Miller (Lawrence Fishburne) to salvage the vessel. Where has the ship been all this time and what happened to its crew?