Mike Judge, ‘King of the Hill’ co-creator said recently that a revival of the beloved animated series “has a very good chance” of happening. If it does, however, it won’t be on the show’s original home.
Fox Entertainment president Michael Thorn told THR that the broadcast network won’t be part of any possible revival.
“That’s not going to be with Fox,” Thorn said. “We love that team, and we love that show. It’s obviously part of our animation legacy. But we’re we’re really focusing on animation is launching the kind of the next wave of our signature animated series, while still having our great legacy shows.”
Judge and co-creator Greg Daniels launched an animation company, Bandera Entertainment, earlier this year; with one of the projects in the works there was a King of the Hill revival. At Comic-Con in July, Judge made his remarks about a revival having a good chance of coming to fruition.
This is not the first time a King of the Hill revival has been discussed: Back in 2017, when producer 20th Century Fox TV and the Fox network were still under the same roof, the broadcaster said it had had conversations with Judge and Daniels about relaunching the series.
The studio is now part of Disney, and Fox is pushing to partially or wholly own any new series that it airs. The latter fact, Thorn said, is the main reason Fox won’t be King of the Hill’s home again: “We’re really focused on what are the new shows that we believe can creatively break out, that we also have a significant ownership stake in, and if not outright own 100 percent of it,” he said. “And on a show like King of the Hill, which we love, there’s really no opportunity for us to have an ownership stake in that show. It’s not a move that we can make as we grow out our next wave of animation, where ownership is so, so crucial to the long-running success of these series.”
King of the Hill’s 13 seasons currently stream on Hulu.
