The Lizzie McGuire reboot has stalled after Disney+ changed its mind on the direction of the show. Specifically, Hilary Duff and showrunner Terri Minsky are having doubts about whether the adult life of everyone’s favourite Disney teen, who is now a 30-something woman, can be portrayed with a PG rating.
Last night, Duff elaborated on her thoughts about the status of the Lizzie McGuire reboot and how she thinks that the show’s ratings should grow up with Lizzie and her lifelong fans. “Was incredibly excited to launch ‘Lizzie’ on D+ and my passion remains,” Duff wrote in a statement on Instagram. “However, I feel a huge responsibility to honour the fans’ relationship with Lizzie who, like me, grew up seeing themselves in her. I’d be doing a disservice to everyone by limiting the realities of a 30-year-old’s journey to live under the ceiling of a PG rating.”
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Not one to present a problem without a possible solution, Duff thinks that bringing the show to Hulu would be a way for everyone to make the show they want. This move has been successfully executed by other shows such as High Fidelity and Love, Victor, which were originally meant for Disney+ and found a new home on Hulu. Refinery29 reached out to Disney+ for comment.
Last year, Disney made a deal with Comcast assuming full control of Hulu as of last May with the intention of the streaming platform serving as a home to content that doesn’t fit the ratings of Disney+, reports Variety.
Up until this week, Duff remained silent on the issue. Earlier, she dropped hints about her mixed feelings by posting a screenshot to her Instagram story. The photo was of an article announcing the Disney+ Love, Simon series, titled Love, Victor, would move to Hulu after it was deemed not “family-friendly” enough. Circling the words “family-friendly,” Duff not so cryptically wrote “sounds familiar” above the headline.
Disney+ reportedly wants a family-friendly reboot that matches the rating of the original series so it can air on the streaming network. The show’s star Hilary Duff thinks they can stick to the version she and showrunner Terri Minsky were creating if Disney+ agrees to move the show to Hulu. When production began, Disney+ approved of Duff and Minsky’s take on the reboot, but changed its mind after the first two episodes were filmed.
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The show halted filming in January when Disney fired Minsky, who was the showrunner for both the original series and the reboot. Rumors began to swirl about whether the show would continue at all. “I am so proud of the two episodes we did,” Minsky told Variety in an interview. “Hilary has a grasp of Lizzie McGuire at 30 that needs to be seen. It’s a wonderful thing to watch. I would love the show to exist, but ideally, I would love it if it could be given that treatment of going to Hulu and doing the show that we were doing. That’s the part where I am completely in the dark. It’s important to me that this show was important to people. I felt like I wanted to do a show that was worthy of that kind of devotion.”
Disney has not yet announced a new showrunner, but acknowledged the pause in filming in a statement to Variety saying they were allowing time for “creative re-development.”
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