Sadly, the Lizzie McGuire reboot is no longer happening. On Wednesday, Hilary Duff shared a post to her Instagram in which she briefly explained that the Disney+ revival of her iconic series has been scrapped entirely.
“I know the efforts and conversations have been everywhere trying to make a reboot work but, sadly and despite everyone’s best efforts, it isn’t going to happen,” Duff wrote in the post.
Although she didn’t give a specific reason as to what ultimately killed the production, which was first announced in August 2019, Duff reiterated that she had hoped to take the Lizzie McGuire character — who was supposed to be 30 — in a more adult-friendly direction from the 13-year-old she played in the show’s original run from 2001-2004. Back in February, Duff publicly stated that she wanted Disney to move the show from Disney+ to Hulu so that it wouldn’t be constrained by the service’s family-friendly policy.
“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,” Duff wrote in the February post.
Duff made it clear in her latest post that the friction between Disney and her creative ambitions to portray a more mature version of McGuire had not been resolved.
“I want any reboot of Lizzie to be honest and authentic to who Lizzie would be today,” Duff wrote on Wednesday. “It’s what the character deserves. We can all take a moment to mourn the amazing woman she would have been and the adventures we would have taken with her.
Disney’s statement on the matter was a little more terse, but conveyed more or less the same message about creative differences.
“Lizzie McGuire fans have high expectations for any new stories,” they told The Hollywood Reporter. “Unless and until we are confident we can meet those expectations, we’ve decided to hold off and today, we informed the cast’s representatives that we are not moving forward with the planned series.”
In addition to Duff’s qualms with the way the reboot was being written, the show’s creator, Terri Minsky, was fired from the production in January after only two episodes had been filmed. As Variety reported at the time, Minsky was hired on as both showrunner and executive producer, but Disney was unsatisfied with the first two episodes and, according to one representative, wanted to put “a new lens on the show”. However, a new showrunner was never announced to fill her place.
