Fresh off the confirmation earlier today that the series finale of This Is Us will premiere in May, series creator Dan Fogelman is already talking about the potential for a movie later down the line. TV shows ending and then producing in-continuity movies isn’t unheard of in the modern era, Sex and the City, Breaking Bad, Entourage, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos, have all done this before, but if you’ll notice the pattern none of those were network TV dramas. Speaking during NBC’s Scripted Press Day earlier, Fogelman noted that a This Is Us movie would need to be figured out but could theoretically happen.TV shows ending and then producing in-continuity movies isn’t unheard of in the modern era
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“I say no to nothing,” the Primetime Emmy nominee said when asked about a follow-up. “If we can figure out a movie and can get together with [the cast] again in a few years, I’d love to. I don’t know what it would be because we close out our story in the series finale….It’s not because we don’t have any more story to tell, it’s because we exactly planned it to go this way. We’re on a five-year path and to suddenly pivot and add more because we don’t want it to end wouldn’t be quite responsible for the show and what we have planned and it would start becoming something else.”
“I don’t know what that [movie] would be,” Fogelman added. “By the end of this season, I think we’ll have told the complete story, so I’m not sure it’s like if you’re doing the movie of like what would have happened if Jack survived the fire or something.”
Per Variety, after making this joke, Fogelamn said, “The president of NBC is literally texting me right now: ‘Yes to the movie.’”
The final season is set to be packed with story, including spending a lot more time in the future than we have in the past, visiting with Rebecca (Mandy Moore) on her death bed and stories with the children and grandchildren of the original cast.
There are eighteen total episodes in the sixth and final season of This Is Us with only five of them having aired so far. The series is on hiatus through much of February while the 2022 Winter Olympics air on NBC. This Is Us will return on February 22 with the series finale set to premiere on Tuesday, May 24, at 9 PM ET.
