Full House was a huge hit during its original run and has lived on for years in syndication; regardless, when original series creator Jeff Franklin was initially pitching the spinoff, he had trouble getting any of the traditional outlets to bite. When CinemaBlend spoke with the Fuller House creator recently, he discussed the challenges of finding Fuller House a home, which included being told "no" by a slew of major networks. Here's what he had to say:
We had actually originally pitched the show to more traditional outlets. We went to ABC, we went to Nick at Nite, to the home of Full House both originally and now and figured that was probably a great fit for the show because it had such success for both ABC and Nick at Nite. We also went to TBS where it was airing and we went to some other places. We actually hadn't thought about the streaming services. All of those places passed on the show and then one of the executives from Nickelodeon--his name is Brian Wright--moved over to Netflix and they actually called us and said, 'We'd like to hear the pitch.' It was really Netflix that took the lead, not me.
Jeff Franklin's pretty candid about what must be the exhausting process of pitching to so many different places, but he's also happy to give credit where credit is due. It wasn't Franklin's genius idea to move to a subscription streaming platform. However, his seemingly earnest conversations about the potential of Fuller House with a slew of different companies didn't fall on deaf ears. Brian Wright helped him out, and Netflix stepped up to bat. When Netflix came to Jeff Franklin, they made him a deal he couldn't refuse:
Well you know the simple answer is they bought the show. That's really the simple answer. They stepped up and wanted the show and offered us a really nice deal to start off with.
The show produced 13 episodes during its first season, and just a short time after that first season was available for streaming, Netflix made the decision to renew the series for Season 2. Although Netflix doesn't officially release ratings--even to Jeff Franklin himself--outside companies that are trying to track such things have listed Fuller House as one of Netflix's largest successes and potentially even its most popular show at the time of its release earlier this year. Season 2 just hit the airwaves on December 9, and many households streamed the series right away.
Right now, the actors and all of the people on the backend are still waiting for a Season 3 renewal, although John Stamos seems to think there will be plenty of new episodes to come. Plus, Jeff Franklin has expressed interest about everyone really wanting to move forward with another new set of episodes and get back into the grind.
I hope all your readers tune in sooner rather than later, because we are really anxious to get going again.
Typically--although not always--Netflix makes decisions about renewals and cancellations in a timely manner, so hopefully we will be hearing about the future of Fuller House soon. In the meantime, you can find out what the subscription streaming service has coming up with our Netflix premiere schedule.
