"Will & Grace": Talks Underway for New Season of Emmy-Winning Comedy
by Nellie Andreeva
October 27, 2016


The "Will & Grace" election-themed reunion mini-episode made waves with its surprising reveal last month, triggering talk of a possible real reunion. While nothing is set, I hear conversations have been ongoing about a new season of the Emmy-winning comedy series, which aired from 1998-2006 on NBC.

Sources caution that there are no deals in place, the sides are currently far apart and there are a lot of hurdles that make mounting a "Will & Grace" return a daunting task, but at least there is a will to pursue it. Producing studio Universal TV needs to secure stars Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Megan Mullally and Sean Hayes as well as creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan.

I hear the idea is to do a one-off 10-episode installment. NBC and Uni TV had no comment.





While NBC, the series’ original network, is a possibility, I hear a streaming player, like Netflix, is considered more likely. While I’d heard Netflix’s name mentioned as a potential partner, I hear there haven’t been formal conversations with the Internet network, which has successfully rebooted several beloved series including "Arrested Development", "Full House", and "Gilmore Girls", returning with four movies.

"Will & Grace" is in a different category, making negotiations more difficult. It was a very successful major network sitcom that ran for eight seasons and sold in off-network syndication where it continues to make a lot of money. By the end of the show’s run on NBC, the four stars commanded very high salaries — reported at the time to be close to $600,000 an episode — in addition to a piece of the series’ lucrative back end.





While "Gilmore Girls" producer Warner Bros TV had some room to maneuver with the new installment done as a series of movies (those still triggered a lawsuit by the original series’ executive producer Gavin Polone), a new season of "Will & Grace" would likely have to adhere to the back-end distribution structure already in place, leaving Universal TV little room to negotiate on potential new profit demands.

Netflix has been brought up as a logical scenario for another reason: Unlike its Must See TV counterparts "Seinfeld", "Frasier" and "Friends", "Will & Grace" does not have a streaming deal for its library of existing episodes, which currently are only available in repeats on cable networks and local stations. So there is a potential bigger play for Universal (and possibly Warner Bros) here, with a streaming deal for a new installment as well as the old episodes of the show.

In one of the most intriguing 1990s TV pacts, Warner Bros landed domestic distribution of the NBC Studios-produced "Will & Grace" in exchange to loaning out Mutchnick and Kohan, who had been signed into an exclusive WBTV deal, back to NBC to work on the show. Some sources indicate that deal may have expired, reverting distribution rights back to NBCUniversal, but WBTV still has a play on the new installment as it has Mutchnick under an overall deal.





It was Mutchnick who was behind the "Will & Grace" reunion mini-episode, writing it, getting the cast together, and getting the original set re-assembled in the basement of the lot where the NBC series filmed.

The episode has been a hit, drawing more than 6 million viewers since its debut on the day of the first Presidential debate, September 26. (The "Will & Grace" quartet will stage another reunion tonight at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser.)





What’s more, unlike some other reunions, the characters on "Will & Grace" almost picked up where they left off, all of them looking close to the way they did 10 years ago when the series ended, and so did the character dynamic on the show.

And while negotiations will be difficult — the "Will & Grace" ensemble players have had successful post-show careers, giving them leverage — there is a big opening as none of the four is currently tied to another network series. (McCormack stars on the upcoming Canadian sci-fi drama series "Travelers", which will air on Netflix outside of Canada.)

An enthusiastic fan reaction to the news of a "Gilmore Girls" follow-up on Netflix helped close contacts with the series’ stars. Maybe a similar response will help get deals done for a new "Will & Grace" season.

http://deadline.com/2016/10/will-and-grace-new-season-negotiations-1201843730/

Ooo

I'm in for that !!!

http://splitsider.com/2016/11/the-case-against-a-will-grace-reboot/

Back in September, when Donald Trump becoming President was just a remote possibility and not a hard fact that most of us are still swallowing, the cast of Will & Grace reconvened for an “episode” that was really just an ad for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It didn’t seem to do much for HRC’s voter turnout, but it did create buzz suggesting that maybe the show would produce some actual new episodes. Now, as someone who greatly enjoyed this show growing up, and can still get into the odd rerun on Lifetime, I could see where this would seem like an exciting development. But while it may some fun in theory, there are multiple reasons why Will & Grace 2.0 would be a disaster in practice.

For one thing, the show already had a successful run. It lasted for eight full seasons, and it gave every major character a satisfying conclusion. Usually, when a show is brought back from the dead, it’s because it was canceled too soon in its original run or it left certain pressing questions on the table. Neither of those things are true for Will & Grace, so there’s no real impetus to bring it back other than “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to watch some new Will & Grace episodes?” Taking this into consideration, it’s quite likely that the show would operate without much purpose other than sheer nostalgia. From that perspective, it would be a somewhat less bad version of Fuller House, but not much more.

Perhaps more importantly, there’s the question of how a new Will & Grace would fit into the culture of 2016. When the show debuted in 1998, it was often praised for its portrayal of gay characters. Notice that I didn’t say how it portrayed them, just the mere fact that yes, Will & Grace did, in fact, acknowledge that gay people existed. That’s how low the bar was in the late 90s, where very few shows were willing to address homosexuality. Now, we live in the world of Modern Family and Transparent, and LGBT representation on television is far more common then it was then. Why would this be a problem? Because if we’re being honest, Will & Grace‘s portrayal of its gay characters often wasn’t all that progressive. The show dealt in obvious stereotypes all the time, and even though Jack McFarland’s antics were always good for a laugh, seeing someone so stereotypically flamboyant might not work in 2016. Even Will, the more down-to-earth of the two main gay characters, was often involved in jokes where the punchline was “see, because gay people do that!” During its original run, Will & Grace was able to get away with this type of humor (although it’s worth noting, it was criticized for it then, too), largely because LGBT representation was so rare. That’s no longer the case, and in a TV landscape where LGBT characters are far more complex than Will and Jack could ever hope to be, Will & Grace‘s broad characterizations might seem lacking at best, and offensive at worst.

If you’re looking for a similar situation to compare this to, consider the unmitigated disaster that was the Entourage movie. This was a case of culture shifting and leaving a once-beloved piece of entertainment behind. When Entourage was in its original run, it was praised effusively by critics, while Ari and Turtle became household names. In theory, a movie seemed perfect. The problem was, this was a show that essentially portrayed white male entitlement at its most unhinged. Furthermore, the female characters on the show often had paper thin personalities and pretty much only existed because the male characters needed them to. At the time, no one really cared because, well…the show was fun! The antics of Johnny Drama and company were just a good time, and no one ever really analyzed them. However, in the time between the end of the series and the release of the movie, modern feminism had an increasingly strong presence in film and television criticism. Suddenly, a show about rich white guys without any real problems just seemed dated, and the movie felt like a relic as it flopped at the box office. A Will & Grace reboot could face a similar fate if it continues to traffic in the stereotypical gay humor that marked its original run.

Admittedly, there are ways to fix this. Since the show ended in 2006, the characters would likely be a decade older, and more mature. This could be an opportunity for some serious evolution, particularly with Jack’s character. If the show were to make him more introspective and less self-involved, that could actually be interesting. Of course, Jack was also a lot of people’s favorite character, so there would have to be a balanced approach. Basically, don’t ruin who he is, but give him a little more depth beyond his outlandish personality, and make him a little bit less aggressively flamboyant. If a new version of Will & Grace was actually willing to evolve its characters, and exist for reasons other than nostalgia, it might actually be worth watching.

Still, I’m skeptical. The show had a good run, and there’s no real reason to bring it back. Frankly, this seems like the kind of idea that the member berries from South Park would have cooked up. “‘Member Will? ‘Member Grace?” “‘Member Jack and Karen?” “Yeah, I ‘member!” As we saw with Fuller House, bringing back a show that already had a lengthy run for no reason other than “Hey, why not?” often produces tepid, uninteresting results. When you couple that with how dubious the show’s trafficking in gay stereotypes might look in 2016, the reasons to be pessimistic about a Will & Grace reboot far outweigh the reasons to be excited about one. Will, Grace, Jack, and Karen had a nice run, but instead of engaging in more nostalgia-for-the-sake-of-nostalgia, let’s just leave them in the early 2000s, where they belong.

Megan Mullally says there’s A ‘Good Chance’ of ‘Will & Grace’ returning http://huff.to/2hkBJ91