It’s been seven years since we last saw Mary-Louise Parker selling weed on Showtime’s Weeds, which, now that we think about it, isn’t really a long time. Still, according to Variety, Parker is teaming up with Starz to develop a new sequel series set 10 years after the events of the original show (it hasn’t even been that long!) and set in today’s “era of legalization.” Also, the working title for the revival is Weeds 4.20, and that is… heavy sigh.
Parker is set to star in and executive produce the show, but original Weeds creator Jenji Kohan is apparently not involved at all. This is apparently tied in with rights-holder Lionsgate’s push into the world of syndicating its biggest prestige TV hits, specifically Weeds and Mad Men. The latter is getting set up for a big Friends or Seinfeld-style streaming battle in 2020, as Lionsgate hopes to make significantly more than it did when it first gave Netflix the Mad Men streaming rights for $1 million per episode in 2011. A Weeds revival would then put the original Weeds back in the public eye, generating more interest in streaming the old show and therefore (presumably) generating more interest from streamers in paying or it.
Variety doesn’t say when Weeds 4.20 might happen, but… maybe they’ll wait a few years until it’s actually been a decade since the original show went off the air.