Malcolm In The Middle turns 25 next month, and that anniversary is coming with a pretty big gift. Variety reports today that series stars Frankie Muniz, Bryan Cranston, and Jane Kaczmarek have all signed on to make four new episodes of the series for Disney+. A release date has yet to be announced, but anniversaries are clearly front of mind if the new logline is any indication: “Malcolm (Muniz) and his daughter are drawn into the family’s chaos when Hal (Cranston) and Lois (Kaczmarek) demand his presence for their 40th wedding anniversary party.”
Series creator Linwood Boomer is returning to helm the new set of episodes, and it sounds like the limited revival was his idea. “When Linwood Boomer suggested it might be time to bring everyone’s favorite dysfunctional family back for a bit of a reunion, we couldn’t think of a more iconic and influential series to revisit, along with a truly brilliant cast to reunite,” 20th Television President Karey Burke told said in a statement to Variety. Deadline is also reporting that the series is currently working on finding an actress to play Malcolm’s wife and that Christopher Kennedy Masterson and Justin Berfield, the actors who played Francis and Reese, are “likely to be approached” to return. Erik Per Sullivan, who played Dewey in the original series, retired from acting in 2010.
While the timing of the new episodes is prime, more Malcolm In The Middle has been a long time coming. Cranston has been pushing for a reunion since at least 2016, telling E! News, “We wanna start talking about the possibility of putting together a story that makes sense about that family… all I wanna do is tell the story and have a good experience.” This is also notably the second 2000s sitcom that Disney has revived this month alone; last week, news broke that a Scrubs reboot is coming to ABC.
