In 2019, Disney announced that several older properties were being revived for Disney+, and among them was the return of Hilary Duff as Lizzie McGuire. However, despite going into production that year and being promoted among Disney+’s 2020 releases, the series hit trouble early in 2020 with original creator Terri Minsky leaving the project and comments that both Minsky and Duff were hoping to see the series move to Hulu to be able to explore mature content that Disney clearly didn’t want to move forward with on their main platform. Now, a year on from the project officially being declared dead, Duff has shared details on what the new series would have looked like.
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In a new interview with Cosmopolitan, Duff explained the position that Lizzie McGuire would have been in had the series been able to go ahead. With such a long time passing since her last appearance, then it would be inevitable that the character had grown up, and it seems that was one of the biggest stumbling blocks where Disney was concerned. She said:
With Disney’s almost unshakable need to keep its U.S. platform completely child-friendly – where as European countries and others already have mature content on the Disney+ platform on their Stars arm – it is not surprising that they would be cautious about wanting to include stories of cheating and the subsequent fallout of what that kind of storyline would lead to. The biggest question that many original fans of the show will have is whether it was right for Disney to seemingly turn their back on the property for wanting to develop a more adult version of the character.
“My character was moving back home with her parents because she caught her soon-to-be fiancé cheating on her, and she was falling flat on her face at the moment and being like, “I need to pivot because everything that I thought was wasn’t, and I’m turning 30. What the f**k?”
Lizzie McGuire Fans Are No Longer Children, So Why Would A Revival Remain Child-Friendly?
The central concept of the Lizzie McGuire reprisal would have seen the character telling a story of what it is like to start again when things go wrong as someone in their 30s. While this kind of story isn’t anything new in itself, bringing back a popular character in their later years is exactly the type of TV show this is currently big business on streaming platforms. For fans who last saw Lizzie as a young teenager back in 2004, it would have been an interesting catch-up, and aiming at a thirtysomething audience with content to match would have likely proved a nostalgic hit.
While Duff is currently starring in How I Met Your Father, in a different interview, she seemed to suggest that she does still have a little bit of hope that the revival could still happen at some point. She commented, “I don’t think it’s dead, and I don’t think it’s alive.” With the actress still feeling a lot of passion for the project, there is still a chance that fans may get to see an updated Lizzie McGuire series sometime in the future.
