A few weeks ago, news broke that the formerly cancelled TV spinoff of How I Met Your Mother was moving forward with a new title How I Met Your Father (formerly it was How I Met Your Dad). A lot of people were pretty pumped about the spinoff when it was initially trying to get off the ground, so unsurprisingly, a lot of people were at least somewhat excited when the announcement was made that the project was getting a second chance. The only problem? CBS hasn't actually seen hide nor hair of it. Per CBS' Glenn Gellar, this is what's going on:
We haven't seen anything, we haven't been pitched anything. I'm excited to read it when it's finished, and it could potentially be a project for us.
In an interview at the TCA press tour, Glenn Gellar revealed that CBS hasn't actually seen anything related to the How I Met Your Father pitch. We're expecting it to be quite a bit different than the original pitch, if only because CBS passed on the original concept which would have starred Greta Gerwig as a woman who moves in with her brother after her marriage ends. In the original concept, Meg Ryan would have played the "older" voice of the lead character, just as Bob Saget did for Josh Radner in the original series. Throw all of that out the window for the new concept, which is being penned by This Is Us writers Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger.
The good news. Per Deadline, Glenn Gellar actually seems keen to see what How I Met Your Father will look like. As a bunch of pilots are only just now being ordered by the major networks, How I Met Your Father isn't that far behind. It could still pitch itself for the 2017-2018 TV season, if that is indeed the aim. Right now, reports indicate that the pilot for the project is still being written, after which it should be pitched to CBS and maybe other outlets. Hopefully, it will be great and the rest will be history. Otherwise, you'll be seeing 'How I Met Your Mother Spinoff is Dead' headlines again in the coming months.
At the time that the original spinoff pitch was halted from moving forward, Nina Tassler was still heading up content at CBS. She has since left the network, and Glenn Gellar has taken over. Whether or not he will bite when Nina Tassler didn't remains to be seen. Ultimately, this sounds like a whole new project, though, so I definitely have hope.
While we won't know about How I Met Your Father for a while, CBS does has some new programming in the works. You can see what is coming up this winter with our midseason TV premiere schedule.
