Disney+ and Hulu have officially ordered a Glee reboot to series, confirming months of speculation after co-creator Ryan Murphy repeatedly discussed the show’s potential return while promoting FX’s The Shards. The original series ran for six seasons on Fox from 2009 to 2015, following the New Directions glee club at William McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio, as they navigated the show choir circuit alongside a wide range of social issues, each episode built around musical performances.
Murphy revealed last month that he’d just finished writing the reboot script alongside original co-creators Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk, and that he’d been in touch with roughly ten original cast members, describing them as “very enthusiastic” despite having a lot of questions. No casting has been confirmed as part of the series order. The original cast included Amber Riley, Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, Jane Lynch, Kevin McHale, Matthew Morrison, Dianna Agron, Darren Criss, Heather Morris, Jenna Ushkowitz, Harry Shum Jr., and Chord Overstreet, alongside the late Naya Rivera, Cory Monteith, Mark Salling. The latter three original cast members have since died, Monteith in 2013, Salling in 2018, and Rivera in 2020.”
Colfer told Bustle earlier this month that bringing the show back feels complicated in Rivera’s absence, saying it was already “a really tough show to do” and that doing it again without her would be even harder, though he acknowledged fans would likely come after him “with pitchforks and jazz hands” if he turned down a return. Michele has separately told E! News she’d be glad to return, calling the show a permanent piece of her heart and saying she’ll “follow Ryan wherever he goes.”
Glee won six Emmys during its original run, including directing and acting awards for Murphy and Lynch, plus guest-star recognition for Neil Patrick Harris and Gwyneth Paltrow. The show remains culturally active well beyond its finale, drawing around 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify today, a reminder that its music, and the show’s unusually direct handling of topics like sexuality, race, disability, and mental health at the time, has continued finding new, younger audiences long after it left the air. The reboot comes from 20th Television, which produced the original series.
With a script already finished and informal cast conversations already underway, the next major detail to watch for is which original stars actually commit to returning, and how the reboot plans to handle the show’s real-life losses within its fictional world.