Reunion Movies Galore! 'Monk' For Peacock, Troy Barnes Returns, 'Scrubs' "Inevitable"
Sure, there's 'Zoey 102' and 'The Thundermans Return', but there's more!
It seems Peacock is going to be the leader of reunion movies in the modern day. After inheriting the Psych movie series from USA to boost itself at launch, and then making a third film, it fulfilled prophecy by ordering a Community movie in late September. There’s news there too, but first, the next order has gone out, and it’s for Monk.
Peacock has ordered Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie, bringing Tony Shalhoub back to the role of Adrian Monk, the San Francisco-based detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is the role he played in the title role of the original series from 2002 to 2009 for eight seasons and 125 episodes, the last of which solved the murder of his wife that cost him his place as a homicide detective and triggered the development of his OCD and various phobias.
His returning supporting cast includes Ted Levine, Traylor Howard, Jason Gray-Stanford, Melora Hardin, and Hector Elizondo. The original series’s creative team is back for this too, consisting of creator, executive producer and writer Andy Breckman, executive producer David Hoberman, and executive producer/director Randy Zisk. The film’s storyline sees the detective returns to solve one last case involving his beloved stepdaughter Molly, a journalist as she prepares for her wedding.
The series, which began a golden age of USA original programming won a total of eight Primetime Emmy Awards, including three for Shalhoub for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (2003, 2005 and 2006) out of eight consecutive for every season, and two SAG Awards.
Meanwhile, Troy Barnes is reuniting with his study group, as Donald Glover seems to confirm that he is returning to the role for Peacock’s Community movie. Specifically he was quoted as saying “We’re supposed to be shooting it soon. Haven’t seen a script.” and that "we" was enough, at least for sources. The character was last seen in the fifth episode of season five, “Geothermal Escapism”, sailing with Levar Burton around the world to entitle him to money willed to him by the late Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase), who will definitely not be appearing in the movie. Community originally ran for 5 seasons on NBC and a sixth on the short-lived Yahoo Screen, also starring Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Gillian Jacobs, Alison Brie, Ken Jeong and Jim Rash. The only series regular whose return status is still up in the air is that of Yvette Nicole Brown.
And then there’s Scrubs, which ran from 2001 to 2009 for seven seasons on NBC and two on ABC, whose creator Bill Lawrence stated “I think it’s inevitable that it happens”. He so frequently hangs out with his casts that they, such as Zach Braff and Neil Flynn, end up working on his other shows like Ted Lasso or his newest series Shrinking.