Mr. Monk Goes to Streaming: Tony Shalhoub reveals a Monk movie is in the works at Peacock. Shalhoub, who starred in all eight seasons of the Andy Breckman-created series on USA Network, will reprise his Emmy-winning role of germophobic former SFPD detective turned obsessive-compulsive consultant Adrian Monk. It’s still a jungle out there for Mr. Monk — the 90-minute streaming movie shooting in May takes place “post-COVID,” Shalhoub says — but he won’t be on the case alone. “Everybody” is back for the revival movie coming nearly 15 years after the 2009 Monk series finale.
“We’re going to do — I’m not sure if I’m doing a spoiler alert here — but we’re doing a Monk 90-minute movie for streaming. And we’re going to start shooting that in May,” Shalhoub said on Dr. Loubna Hassanieh’s Unheard Stories: Stories That Inspire. “It’s Monk post-COVID, so he’s in trouble [laughs]. We’re bringing everybody back, all of the characters, and doing a 90-minute streaming [movie] for Peacock.”
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Shalhoub’s Monk led a cast of characters that included his original assistant Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), Captain Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine), Lt. Randy Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford), and his second assistant Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard) and her daughter Julie (Emmy Clarke).
In 2020, Shalhoub briefly revived his character for a “Monk in Quarantine” segment on Peacock’s At-Home Variety Show. Last year, the actor told PopCulture.com there was a “good chance” he would reprise his role in a Monk TV movie. (USA Network and Peacock parent company Comcast NBCUniversal previously ordered straight-to-streaming sequel movies of USA’s Psych.)
“We’re in discussion now about a movie, a TV movie, of Monk returning, kind of folding in the pandemic story,” Shalhoub said, saying at the time the Monk revival was “definitely in the planning stages.”
A Monk television movie was developed but ultimately scrapped in 2012. According to Monk series writer-producer Hy Conrad, USA Network tapped Breckman to develop two follow-up scripts: an international caper and another following Monk’s run for mayor.
In the first unmade Monk movie, “Monk gets married and goes to France, only to have his new wife try to kill him,” Conrad revealed, adding that script was shot down “for creative reasons” and because it was “too much of a departure” from the series. A second script, titled “Mr. Monk for Mayor,” would have involved Howard’s Natalie and Levine’s Stottlemeyer, but not Gray-Stanford’s Disher.
In “Mr. Monk for Mayor,” Monk’s step-daughter, Molly (Alona Tal), “has become an investigative reporter like her mother and wants to expose a scandal at City Hall. But the only way to get that information is to get inside the mayor’s office — hence Monk’s decision to run for mayor.” This version reportedly went unmade because the expected $6 million budget was deemed too expensive.
Monk ran for 125 episodes between 2002-2009 on USA Network. All eight seasons of the original series are streaming now on Peacock.
