For years, USA Network fans asked Psych and Monk‘s showrunners whether the two eccentric detective series would ever cross over — and for the most part, the answer was something along the lines of “never say never,” and that’s still the attitude that Psych: The Movie director Steve Franks is bringing to the idea.
Despite a number of USA ads where Shawn, Gus, and Mr. Monk shared the screen, though, it seemed it would never come to pass — until the end of the Psych finale, when it was suggested that Monk had been working with Juliet in San Francisco while Shawn and Gus had been spending time in Santa Barbara during the show’s final season.
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“You know what? If he’s out there and he’s still being a detective in San Francisco, we certainly would be open to it,” Franks told PopCulture.com at Comic Con International in San Diego last week. “We’ll see how Tony Shalhoub feels, and if they ever run into each other, that might be a nice surprise. But who knows where the Psych group is going next? Let’s hope that we’re in San Francisco long enough for that union to happen. We always keep that door open. There’s also a possibility that Inspector Dirty Harry Callahan could show up in one of the Psych movies, but I don’t know if Clint Eastwood would be up for that.”
In the series finale, after relocating to San Francisco to follow Juliet, Shawn discovered that he wasn’t the only incredibly talented police consultant in town — in a line of dialogue that strongly implied Monk was just beyond a doorway that our heroes never crossed.
Psych, which ran from 2006 until 2014 on USA, centered on Shawn Spencer, a slacker whose photographic memory and keen sense of deductive reasoning made him a perfect detective — except for his utter contempt for the local police, born out of a bad relationship with his cop dad (who is also the one who groomed his detective skills; it’s all very complicated). He found a way to have his cake and eat it too (along with lots of pineapples over 8 seasons) by convincing local law enforcement that he was a psychic and contracting out his services as a consultant.
James Roday, Dule Hill, Tim Omundson, Maggie Lawson, Corbin Bernsen, and Kirsten Nelson will return. Recurring antagonist Despereaux, played by Cary Elwes, is expected to be back as well base on Elwes’s own comments during a recent comic book convention appearance. Chuck and Thor: The Dark World actor Zachary Levi stars as the villain.
Even before the movie was officially announced, rumor had it Psych would be returning to Vancouver — where the series originally filmed, and the location tagged on Hill’s Instagram photo — for a feature film shoot. At the time of the show’s cancellation three years ago, USA executives had teased the potential for a return down the line.
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