In an unsurprising move, but one that is still likely to make some fans very happy, Veronica Mars is officially bringing back Enrico Colantoni as the title character’s private-eye father, Keith Mars.
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Besides appearing in the three seasons of the original TV series, Colantoni reprised his role as Keith in the 2014 feature film that reunited the show’s cast for the first time.
“We always wondered if [the movie] was going to happen. For a while there we thought it wasn’t going to happen and because of your belief, it is going to happen,” Colantoni said back when he was cast for the movie. “We always knew that Veronica Mars was a special thing and how awesome is it to know that you guys felt the same way? I can’t wait to play Keith Mars again.”
In the time since the Veronica Mars movie, Colantoni has continued to work with Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas: Colantoni, who also appeared in Galaxy Quest, joined the cast of Thomas’s CW series iZombie in 2016 as Lou Benedetto, a vice detective whose cases overlapped with Liv’s personal and professional life. He returned in 2017 to direct an episode.
Colantoni also appeared in Thomas’ Veronica Mars spinoff, Play It Again, Dick, which was produced by CW Seed shortly after the success of the Kickstarter-funded Veronica Mars movie. That series, which centered on Ryan Hansen, was a meta-comedy based on the idea that he wanted a Dick Casablancas-focused reunion series and was trying to convince the rest of the Veronica Mars cast to be part of it.
So far, a number of actors including Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring, Percy Daggs III, Francis Capra, and David Starzyk will return to reprise their original series roles in Hulu‘s upcoming revival of the cult hit Veronica Mars, showrunner Rob Thomas has revealed.
Bell, Dohring, Hansen, and several other actors from Veronica Mars and Thomas’s series Party Down have also played roles on iZombie. The new Veronica Mars will employ NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who has a role on iZombie‘s upcoming final season, as a staff writer.
Other series regulars from the original run, including Tina Majorino, Hansen, and Teddy Dunn, have yet to officially sign on. Almost every major character from the TV series returned for the movie in 2014.
Veronica Mars originally ran from 2004 to 2007 on UPN and The CW. One of the most critically-praised shows of its time, its cancellation was so mourned by its fans that they mounted a record-breaking crowdfunding effort when Thomas convinced Warner Bros. to make a feature film after using Kickstarter to prove there was an audience for the project.
The success of the movie led to tie-in novels and the Play It Again, Dick webseries while Thomas worked on iZombie and Bell moved on to The Good Place. When Hulu came knocking, the pair managed to find a way to schedule the series which will allow Bell to remain a part of her NBC hit while still making Veronica Mars.
Hulu’s Veronica Mars is expected to begin production soon with an eye toward a 2019 release.
