Judd Apatow Reveals Why a ‘Freaks and Geeks’ Revival Won’t Happen
Our few hopes for a Freaks and Geeks revival may finally have been crushed. Executive producer Judd Apatow shares that even if the star-studded cast could be coerced to return, creator Paul Feig will likely never take us back to William McKinley High.
Apatow signaled as much in conversation with UPROXX, despite Netflix frequently courting high-profile revivals like Arrested Development and Fuller House. It would be one thing to reassemble the now-megastar cast of Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Busy Philipps, Jason Segel, Seth Rogen, Martin Starr, John Francis Daley, Samm Levine and more, but Apatow seems to think that no amount of money would guarantee interest from Paul Feig:
I only think we would ever be interested in revisiting it because we had an idea that we thought was as strong as the original idea. I don’t think there is a number that would make us do it as a cash grab. But if Paul Feig woke up in the middle of night and said ‘I’ve figured it out,’ then something like that becomes real. I don’t believe that has ever been his intention. We always felt like we ended on an oddly perfect, magical note. And most of the ideas that Paul wanted to express, he got to express. You know, we were compressed in Freaks and Geeks because we thought we were gonna get canceled at any moment. So we used most of our great ideas. The next phase of the show would’ve been all of the geeks suddenly being six feet tall and how that would change their relationships. And so it probably would’ve ruined the show anyways.
The original Freaks and Geeks ran for only twelve episodes from 1999 through 2000, but nonetheless remains a staple of many all-time TV rankings. Any revival would naturally pick up with the characters significantly older, but is it worth revisiting McKinley in some form?
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