Glee Is Coming Back, With a Reboot Ordered by Disney+ and Hulu

Glee is returning. Disney+ and Hulu have ordered a reboot of the musical comedy-drama, according to Variety, and Deadline reported that the order is a series order, meaning full episodes are commissioned without a pilot being made first.

The original show ran on Fox from 2009 and ended in 2015 after six seasons. It followed the New Directions glee club at William McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio, as its members competed on the show choir circuit. Each episode featured a musical performance. The reboot will be produced by 20th Television, the studio arm of Disney, and will air on Hulu and Disney+.

Disney has not shared much more. Casting has not been announced, and no premiere date has been set. Backstage reported on 14 October that Ryan Murphy had finished a script for a possible reboot and that it was too early to name a date.

Murphy confirmed that he wrote the script with Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, who also worked on the original. He told Entertainment Tonight that he had been in touch with around 10 of the original cast members. In July, while promoting his FX series The Shards, he said Glee could be revisited because many young people now watch it.

Some former cast members have already responded. Lea Michele told E! News she would be happy to join a reboot. Chris Colfer told Bustle that a reboot would be complicated after the death of Naya Rivera, who died in 2020 at age 33 after drowning in a lake while trying to save her young son. Colfer said he would still consider it.

The show's original run was also marked by loss. Cory Monteith, who played Finn Hudson, died from an overdose in 2013 while the series was still on air.

The old episodes are already easy to find. Hulu's series page lists six seasons and 121 episodes for streaming, and Disney+ lists Seasons 1 through 6 of the original series. Deadline reported in 2022 that the original show had come to both services that year, timed to the start of Pride month in June. Disney has also said Glee draws around 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

Glee was Murphy's first major breakthrough on broadcast television, and he won his first Emmy for directing its pilot. The original series won six Emmys in all, including awards for Murphy and Jane Lynch, and it featured guest stars such as Neil Patrick Harris and Gwyneth Paltrow.

For viewers, the next concrete step is casting. Until a cast and a date are announced, the reboot remains a script and an order, with no set schedule for when it will reach screens.