Glee reboot ordered at Disney+ and Hulu from original creators

Key takeaways

• Disney+ and Hulu have given a new Glee series a series order, announced on Wednesday, 21 October 2026, according to Variety, TheWrap, TVLine and The Hollywood Reporter.
• 20th Television, the studio behind the original Fox show, is producing. Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, who created the original, wrote the script together.
• No cast, premiere date, episode count or logline has been announced. It is also unclear whether the show will continue the original story, reimagine it, or do something in between.
• The original Glee ran on Fox from 2009 to 2015 across six seasons and 121 episodes. It has streamed on Disney+ and Hulu since June 2022.

What was announced

The Glee reboot is official: Disney+ and Hulu have ordered a new Glee series, announced on 21 October 2026. 20th Television is producing, and original creators Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan wrote the script together.

TheWrap noted that the order comes about 17 years after the show's Fox debut. 20th Television will produce the new series, as it did the original under its former name, 20th Century Fox Television. Disney acquired the studio in its 2019 purchase of most of 21st Century Fox's entertainment assets, so the franchise now sits with the same company as the two streaming services ordering the revival.

The script comes from Murphy, Falchuk and Brennan, the three co-creators of the original show. Murphy told Entertainment Tonight in late September that the three had written something together. TheWrap quoted him as saying simply, "We have a script." TheWrap also reported that it is not yet known how the trio will divide showrunning duties or whether someone else will run the show day to day. The Hollywood Reporter, citing unnamed sources, said deals for the creative team were still being finalized when the order was reported.

Confirmed versus unconfirmed

The announcement is short on detail. The table below separates what reporting from multiple outlets confirms from what is still unknown as of 21 October 2026.

How the revival came together

Murphy first hinted publicly at a return in July 2026, at the premiere of his FX drama The Shards. He told People that the show had "come back around" and that many younger viewers are now discovering it, according to TVLine and Yahoo Entertainment.

About two months later, at the premiere of the 13th season of American Horror Story, Murphy told Entertainment Tonight that he had just finished the script. In the same period he said he had been in touch with around 10 members of the original cast. He described them as "very enthusiastic about the idea," while adding that they had many questions about what their characters would do.

Some original cast members have spoken publicly about returning, though none has signed on. Yahoo Entertainment reported that Jane Lynch, who played cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, said on a podcast that she would be "the first in line." Lea Michele, who played Rachel Berry, told E! News she would "follow Ryan wherever he goes." These are statements of interest, not casting announcements.

Any revival will also have to deal with the show's losses. Three members of the original ensemble have died: Cory Monteith in 2013, Mark Salling in 2018 and Naya Rivera in 2020. The original series wrote Monteith's character out in the season five episode "The Quarterback." How a new series treats that history is one of the open creative questions.

The original show by the numbers

Glee aired its pilot on Fox on 19 May 2009 and its finale on 20 March 2015. It followed the New Directions glee club and became one of the most visible network shows of its era, partly because of its weekly pop and show-tune covers.

The music was a business in its own right. Singles were released alongside episodes, and the cast toured after the first and second seasons. A filmed version of the 2011 tour, Glee: The 3D Concert Movie, had a limited theatrical release that August. In April 2012, Columbia Records said the cast had become the first act to place 200 songs on the Billboard Hot 100. That is the reason commentators, including a Forbes piece published on the day of the announcement, are asking whether a revival can bring back the show's music revenue in the streaming era.

Streaming history

In the United States, the original series streamed on Netflix for more than seven years before leaving the service in December 2021, according to the show's Wikipedia entry. It then spent about a year on Prime Video and moved to Disney+ and Hulu on 1 June 2022. Disney+ had already announced the full series for its Latin American service in February 2021.

That history helps explain the order. The library already lives on Disney's platforms, so a new series can send viewers back to 121 episodes of existing material. Murphy's own comments point to a younger audience discovering the show for the first time.

Television this week also lost a familiar face from an earlier era of network drama. Tom Skerritt, the sheriff in Picket Fences and the flight instructor Viper in Top Gun, has died at 93, according to his family; see our obituary of Tom Skerritt.

What it means

For Disney, Glee is a known title that it fully owns, with a large music catalogue and a streaming library already in place. A series order signals confidence in the brand, but the announcement leaves the most important creative choices open.

The key questions for fans are the ones Disney has not answered: who returns, whether the story picks up with the original characters or starts fresh with a new glee club, and when the show will arrive. Until the studio confirms casting and a release window, comments from Murphy and the cast are best read as interest rather than commitments. More details are likely to come once the creative deals reported by The Hollywood Reporter are closed.

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Sources

• Variety: 'Glee' Reboot Officially Set at Disney+ and Hulu (21 October 2026)
• TheWrap: 'Glee' Reboot a Go at Disney+ and Hulu (21 October 2026)
• TVLine: Glee Revival Gets Series Order at Disney+ and Hulu (21 October 2026)
• The Hollywood Reporter: 'Glee' Is Back: Revival Series Coming to Disney+, Hulu (21 October 2026)
• Yahoo Entertainment: A "Glee" Reboot Is Officially Happening (21 October 2026)
• Forbes: Disney's bet on a Glee reboot and the show's music model (21 October 2026)
• Sony Music / Columbia Records: Glee Cast Breaks Own Record With 200 Entries on Billboard Hot 100 (18 April 2012)
• Wikipedia: Glee (TV series)