‘Reba’ Reboot Has Been Scrapped, Producer Reveals

As Reba McEntire’s new sitcom Happy’s Place takes off on NBC, the Reba reboot is officially no longer happening. Happy’s Place creator and executive producer Kevin Abbott, who also served as producer on Reba, spoke to TheWrap about the status of the reboot of the WB/CW sitcom. He explained that he and the team at Reba initially explored a potential reboot series, and that’s where things took a different direction.

“I had actually come up with where the characters were at, where their lives were at [and] what was going to be the dynamic was some new characters,” Abbott shared. While executives were “very interested” in the series, Abbott admitted that the more time passed, the more the industry consolidated, and the reboot didn’t move forward “for various financial reasons and rights reasons.”

“I’d spent six months doing this thing and been working on it, and Reba [McEntire] was like, ‘Well, let’s just do another one… we’ll do something else.’ I was like, ‘I don’t have another one in my back pocket,’” Abbott said. “So I called my wife [Julie Abbott] to complain because I’m a real whiner, and she gave me some comforting, and she hung up, and she called me back like in five minutes, like ‘I have an idea’ it wound up being this idea.”

That idea was Happy’s Place, which is executive produced by Reba producers Abbott, Michael Hanel, and Mindy Schultheis, as well as McEntire, Matt Berry, and Pamela Fryman. Additionally, Reba’s Melissa Peterman also stars on the show with McEntire, and Steve Howey is set to guest star later this season. While the plot is completely different and all new characters, the heart is certainly all the same.

Reba ran for six seasons from 2001 to 2007, initially airing on The WB before shifting to The CW for its final season due to the merge. The series also starred Christopher Rich, Joanna Garcia Swisher, Scarlett Pomers, and Mitch Holleman. There had been rumors for a while that a Reba reboot or reunion could be coming, and knowing that it was going to happen is making me wonder what could have been. However, the fact that it turned into Happy’s Place means that it just wasn’t meant to be, and at the very least, Happy’s Place can still be the home to many more Reba reunions. Fans will just have to tune in on Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC’s 2024 fall schedule.