Hey now, hey now, this “Lizzie McGuire” news is what nightmares are made of.
After weeks of silence, series star Hilary Duff has seemingly revealed what may have caused Disney to pull the plug at least temporarily on the highly anticipated revival of the beloved ’00s sitcom.
In January, Terri Minsky, creator and showrunner for the Disney Plus revival, exited the project after cast and crew filmed two episodes of the new series, which picked up with the titular character all grown up and on the cusp of her 30th birthday.
The streaming service decided to move in a “different creative direction” and placed the revival on a production hiatus, angering fans who’ve long awaited the next chapter in Lizzie’s story following the hugely successful 2003 movie.
Now, Duff is hinting that the revival was not “family-friendly” enough in the eyes of Disney’s new streaming service. On Tuesday, She posted a screenshot of a news article about a “Love, Simon” spinoff series reportedly being jettisoned to Hulu due to its more mature subject matter.
“Sounds familiar,” Duff wrote across the post on Tuesday.
While the “Younger” star hasn’t commented further on the production delay, Minsky seemed to suggest that her frustration stemmed from a difference of opinion with the streaming service over just how adult this version of Lizzie should be.
“I am so proud of the two episodes we did,” Minsky told Variety in an interview published on Wednesday. “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.”
Sources told the outlet that Disney Plus wanted the revival to “appeal to kids and families” and be more “akin to the original series,” despite approving Duff and Minsky’s vision early on in the development process.
At the D23 expo in August, where the revival was first announced, Duff spoke out about what fans could expect from Lizzie all these years later.
“Lizzie has also grown up, she’s older, she’s wiser, she has a much bigger shoe budget,” the actor revealed. “She has her dream job, the perfect life right now working as an apprentice to a fancy New York City decorator. She has the perfect man, who owns a fancy restaurant. She’s getting ready to celebrate her 30th birthday.”
The series was reportedly also set to introduce an openly gay character and an agoraphobic character as part of Lizzie’s big new world.
While the fate of the revival now looks particularly grim, sources at Disney Plus told Deadline that the revival is still very much alive and being redeveloped.
But at this point, the only good that can come from this Mickey Mouse-sized mess is original series star Lalaine, who played Lizzie’s middle school bestie Miranda, using the hiatus to reconsider returning to the series.