There is some major Moonlighting news coming this week, though fans still aren’t quite sure what that news is going to be. Moonlighting, the crime comedy from the 1980s that starred Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd, has become a cult favorite over the years, despite the fact that it’s not available to stream anywhere online. On Monday, creator Glenn Caron took to Twitter to say that he and Disney (who owns ABC) have worked together to deliver something exciting.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Caron said on Monday that he and Disney came up “with a plan,” and that there will be a “big announcement” on Wednesday. There’s no telling what that might be, but odds are it has something to do with the streaming rights for Moonlighting.
Moonlighting hasn’t been available to stream anywhere over the years, and Caron recently revealed that the issue with streaming has been the music used in the original series. The rights aren’t in place for all of the music featured in the show all these years later.
“When we made Moonlighting, television shows didn’t typically use pop music,” Caron told EW. “It was really just us and Miami Vice at that time. So when deals were made for the music, no one anticipated streaming. In order to exhibit the show [on streaming], the owner of the shows, which is the Walt Disney Company, has to go back and make deals for all that music – and they’ve resisted doing that for six or seven years now.”
Unlike Moonlighting, Miami Vice is available online (all five seasons are streaming on Peacock). ABC confirmed to EW that it does still own the rights to Moonlighting, but didn’t respond to a request for comment about the future of the series in regards to streaming.
“With all the attention that Bruce has been getting, hopefully one good thing that might come out of it is we can reinitiate the conversation with Disney about releasing the streaming rights,” Caron said. “It’s hard for me to understand why we can’t find a way to make it work. Peacock is now streaming Miami Vice, so clearly somebody has figured it out.”
If Moonlighting does make it to streaming, it’ll be interesting to see if Disney puts the series on Disney+ or Hulu. The company owns both services and they could each benefit from the addition.
