To quote Finn Hudson, “The show must go all over the place, or something.” He was right: “Glee” is back.
Disney+ and Hulu have greenlit a reboot of Ryan Murphy‘s famous (and infamous) musical dramedy series. “Glee” premiered on Fox in 2009 concluded in 2015 after six seasons of following a group of show choir members from Lima, Ohio as they dealt with the highs and lows of high school and beyond. It was a massive cultural phenomenon that is especially remembered for the blunt, sometimes controversial ways it tackled topics such as sexuality, race, disability, mental health and more — as well as its covers of songs like “Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Teenage Dream,” “River Deep, Mountain High” and “Smooth Criminal,” among others. The series remains popular today, as does its music, which averages 4.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
The original cast included Lea Michelle, Cory Monteith, Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch, Dianna Agron, Chris Colfer, Darren Criss, Amber Riley, Naya Rivera, Heather Morris, Kevin McHale, Jenna Ushkowitz, Harry Shum Jr., Chord Overstreet, Mark Salling and more.
Details about the new “Glee” are scant; Disney shared nothing aside from the fact that the series is being produced by 20th Television and will air on Hulu and Disney+. Casting information is not yet known, though it can safely be assumed that several of the original stars will return. “I’ve been in touch with around 10 of the original cast members,” Murphy recently said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, in which he confirmed that he’d just written a reboot script with collaborators Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. “It’s very sweet, and they all had a lot of questions, but they all were very enthusiastic about the idea.”
Murphy’s comments came weeks after Michele expressed to E! News that she’d be happy to join a “Glee” reboot: “I love ‘Glee.’ I will always love ‘Glee.’ I love Ryan Murphy. It just holds such a special place in my heart for me… I will follow Ryan wherever he goes.”
Speaking to Bustle recently, Colfer pointed out that rebooting “Glee” would be complicated following Rivera’s death, but that he would consider it: “It was a really tough show to do, and it would be really hard to do it now that Naya [Rivera] is gone. But I do know that Glee fans would probably come after me with pitchforks and jazz hands if I said no. So I don’t know, but hopefully I’ll have more information and I can actually think about it.”
Rivera died in 2020 at age 33, tragically drowning in a lake while saving her young son who had fallen into the water. She was the third death among the “Glee” cast: Monteith died from an overdose in 2013, while the show was still on the air, and Salling died by suicide in 2018 after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography.