Key Takeaways
- Disney+ and Hulu have greenlit a Glee reboot from original creators Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan, though they haven’t announced a cast or release date.
- Murphy says he has contacted around 10 original cast members, with Lea Michele expressing enthusiasm and Chris Colfer remaining open despite the production’s past demands and Naya Rivera’s death.
- The original Fox series ran for six seasons and 121 episodes from 2009 to 2015, while its music still draws an average of 4.1 million monthly Spotify listeners.
Glee is officially getting an encore.
Variety reports that Disney+ and Hulu have greenlit a reboot of Ryan Murphy’s hit musical dramedy, bringing the halls of William McKinley High School back to television more than a decade after New Directions took its final bow. The announcement turns Murphy’s recent talk of revisiting the franchise into a full-fledged production, although Disney has yet to reveal casting details or a release date.
20th Television will produce the new series, and it will stream on both platforms, but nearly everything else remains under wraps. Murphy recently confirmed that he completed a script with fellow original creators Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan.
He also revealed that he’s in discussions with familiar faces. “I’ve been in touch with around 10 of the original cast members,” Murphy said. “It’s very sweet, and they all had a lot of questions, but they all were very enthusiastic about the idea.”
Whether any of those conversations will lead to on-screen returns remains unconfirmed. Lea Michele, however, has already made her position clear. “I love Glee. I will always love Glee,” she said before the reboot became official. “I love Ryan Murphy. It just holds such a special place in my heart for me. … I will follow Ryan wherever he goes.”
Michele starred as Rachel Berry, the wildly ambitious vocalist whose Broadway dreams drove much of the original show.
Chris Colfer offered a more complicated response when asked whether he would reprise his role as Kurt Hummel. Colfer acknowledged the demands of making the original series and the absence of Naya Rivera, who played Santana Lopez.
“It was a really tough show to do, and it would be really hard to do it now that Naya is gone,” he said.
Still, he did not close the door, joking that fans might pursue him “with pitchforks and jazz hands” if he refused. Rivera died in 2020 after drowning while saving her young son during a boating trip.
The greenlight comes after Murphy began publicly floating a return over the summer. While promoting his FX series The Shards, he said younger audiences had pushed the show back into the cultural conversation.
“That show is interesting because it’s come back around,” Murphy said then. “Maybe we should revisit that show.”
Its staying power is measurable: music from the series still attracts an average of 4.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Premiering on Fox in 2009, Glee followed a group of teenage outsiders as they navigated competition, relationships, and McKinley High’s unforgiving social order through pop covers and show tunes.
Its song covers, including “Don’t Stop Believin’,” helped turn the cast into a chart powerhouse, while its storylines confronted sexuality, race, disability, bullying, and mental health—sometimes earning acclaim and sometimes igniting backlash.
The original Glee ended in 2015 after six seasons and 121 episodes.
