Glee is officially coming back after Disney+ and Hulu handed the reboot a series order.
The move has been on the cards for some time with co-creator Ryan Murphy regularly discussing its potential return over the last few months as he promotes FX series The Shards.
“That show is interesting because it’s come back around. So many young people now watch it. And I’m like, ‘Maybe we should revisit that show,’” he said in July.
Less than two months later, Murphy revealed that he had just finished a reboot script for the musical comedy series, which originally ran for six seasons on Fox between 2009 and 2015.
Murphy co-created the series with Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk. While Murphy was behind The WB’s Popular and FX’s Nip/Tuck, Glee marked Murphy’s first major broadcast breakthrough, winning his first Emmy for directing the pilot episode.
The former journalist revealed last month that he had been in touch with “around ten of the original cast members” of the show, although no casting was announced as part of the series order.
The show featured the likes of Chris Colfer, Jane Lynch, Kevin McHale, Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison as well as Dianna Agron, Cory Monteith, Amber Riley, Mark Salling, Naya Rivera and Darren Criss.
A number of these stars have since passed including Monteith, who died in 2013, and Rivera, who died in 2020.
Colfer told Bustle earlier this month, “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.”
Set at William McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio, it followed the members of the New Directions, a glee club competing in the show choir circuit, while dealing with social issues. Each episode featured a musical performance.
The reboot comes from 20th Television, which produced the original.
The show, which won six Emmys including for Murphy and Lynch as well as guest stars such as Neil Patrick Harris and Gwyneth Paltrow, currently streams on Hulu and Disney said that it currently draws around 4M monthly listeners on Spotify, highlighting its current relevance.
