The highly-anticipated ‘Lizzie McGuire’ reboot is officially dead at Disney+.
Hilary Duff made the announcement on Instagram on Wednesday.
The revival of the popular Disney Channel original series had been in the works at Disney+ since 2019 and was considered one of the platform’s major projects at the time the streaming service launched. Earlier this year, production on the series halted after show creator Terri Minsky was removed from her role as showrunner.
via Variety:
Production on the show began in November but had paused in early January as Duff was going on her honeymoon in Mozambique. Two days before she returned, Variety broke the news that Minsky would be fired. According to multiple sources, Minsky, her writing staff, the production team and Duff learned that Minsky was being removed as showrunner only after the Variety story was published, despite Variety having reached out to Disney for comment hours prior to publication.
Variety also exclusively reported on the behind-the-scenes issues that led to Minsky’s unceremonious exit. In short, Duff and Minsky wanted to do a more adult version of Lizzie for the revival, while Disney wants a show that would appeal to kids and families, something more akin to the original series. Sources say Disney was initially on board with Minsky and Duff’s take, but the company decided to move in a different direction with the series after the first two episodes were completed
Duff remained mostly quiet about the problems with the show, until she posted a screenshot to her Instagram story of a news headline about the planned Disney Plus “Love, Simon” series. Now titled “Love, Victor,” the show was moved to Hulu after it was deemed not “family-friendly” enough for the Disney-branded streamer. In her post, Duff circled the words “family-friendly” in the headline and wrote above it “Sounds familiar.”
She then publicly asked Disney to move the series to Hulu as well to allow for a more adult-friendly version of the series, though clearly that did not happen.
That’s a shame. See Hilary’s statement in full below.
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