How I Met Your Mother is getting another lease on life with a spinoff series called — if you can believe it — How I Met Your Father. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed today that Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, a pair of writers from the hit show This Is Us, will be spearheading development of the new show, with the original HIMYM creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas onboard to executive-produce. If the HIMYF concept sounds familiar, that’s because it’s already happened once before, except the show was called How I Met Your Dad, and it starred Greta Gerwig as Sally, a.k.a. the lady Ted Mosby. A pilot was filmed, and Meg Ryan even loaned her voice for the role of future Sally, but much to the surprise of most TV-industry watchers, CBS chose not to move forward with the series. It was an especially strange move considering we are in the age of the reboot, the reimagining, and the super-franchise, and Vulture even did a thorough unpacking of all the reasons why CBS would choose to pass on a known successful quantity.
But that all unfolded two whole years ago — a lifetime in the entertainment industry — which means people writing checks are hungry once again to try and recapture the magic of the nine-seasons strong HIMYM brand. Aptaker and Berger will develop Father through 20th Century Fox TV, which produces This is Us and also owns HIMYM. (CBS aired the hit series, but did not actually own it, which possibly contributed to the premature demise of the Gerwig-lead version of the show.) Stay tuned to see if that tiny adjustment to the title is enough to lift this reboot off the ground once and for all.