Three years have passed since the polarizing finale for the hit CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, though the network hasn't exactly let things settle down for good, as it's also been three years since the creative team first went public with the proposed spinoff How I Met Your Dad. Though neither that version nor the second pitch ever got produced, the chances for a HIMYM follow-up are still pretty good, and it was announced that a third spinoff attempt is moving forward. According to Fox Television Group Chairman Dana Walden:
The studio will try [developing a spinoff] with different writers. They will be starting from scratch. It's one that's been slowly cooked. If it's the right idea the right execution, we'll take that.
Fans should be excited to hear that news, which Dana Walden shared with Deadline, as it sounds like all involved are interested in concocting the most suitable How I Met Your Mother follow-up possible. You'll notice that there isn't anything specific being pitched there for where the new project is going, so we could very well see a story surface that isn't tied to the patriarch angle at all. The hunt is currently going for a writer or set of writers who can approach this love-and-booze-friendly universe from a fresh angle, and apparently no former ideas are currently being used.
That first idea for How I Met Your Dad made it through the pilot production stage, with stars such as Greta Gerwig and Nicholas D'Agosto involved, but CBS inevitably passed on the project after creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays refused to do a reshoot without CBS cementing a series order. Two years later, in late 2016, an attempt was made to resurrect the comedy offshoot, now titled How I Met Your Father, with This Is Us writers Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger set to pen the script. Perhaps unfortunately, depending on what angle you're looking at it from, this take had to get shelved after Aptaker and Berger were promoted to executive producers and co-showrunners for This Is Us, making them unavailable.
The cast of How I Met Your Mother are pretty much all off in other places now, so we probably won't see any of them back, anyway. (Though it's definitely not an impossibility, because TV.) Josh Radnor is set to star in the upcoming Jason Katims drama Rise, though if Bob Saget isn't too busy filming stuff for Fuller House Season 3, I'd be down with seeing Future Ted coping with a new life of dating as a widower. Although...after having put that thought into words, maybe I should reconsider things.
For now, we'll have some time to wait to see what's going to happen with this new take on a How I Met Your Mother spinoff. In the meantime, there's so much great stuff heading to the small screen in the near future, and you can check it all out with our summer TV schedule and our fall premiere schedule.
