Yep, 'High School Musical' Is Coming Back To TV, But There's A Big Catch

This is the start of something new... well, sorta new. After nearly a decade, Disney is officially giving fans another addition to the High School Musical franchise, but it may not be in the way that you thought. No, it's actually not going to be High School Musical 4, but rather a whole TV series adapted from the HSM movies to continue the story of the East High Wildcats. Let's get all the info about the new High School Musical TV series right away.

Ok, so the big thing to know about the upcoming show is that it will premiere on the new streaming platform Disney is currently working on. The High School Musical series will be one of the first original series to kick off the still unnamed streaming service, which is expected to launch towards the end of 2019. So, yeah — it probably won't be for about another two years until we get to check back in with the Wildcats, but the good news is that the High School Musical series isn't the only exciting Disney adaptation we can look forward to when the new service drops. Disney will also premiere a new Star Wars trilogy series on the streaming service, as well as a TV adaptation of Monsters Inc. and a new Marvel series as well, per Variety's report.

Right now, we don't really know much about this new High School Musical TV series aside from that it will likely premiere at the end of 2019, but we can try to talk some of the specifics out. The most pressing question (at least in my mind) is whether any of the cast from the original movies will return to star in the show. Logistically, this seems pretty farfetched since the first HSM movie came out in 2006 and all the main actors are now in their late 20s... definitely not high school-aged. But maybe Gabriella will have returned to East High to teach a math or science class, or maybe Sharpay will have put her Broadway dreams aside to take up Ms. Darbus' mantle as the drama teacher, or who knows, Chad might be the new Wildcats basketball coach.

The only cast member I feel confident in saying won't be back is Zac Efron, who clearly became the breakout of the franchise and has gone on to topline some of the biggest blockbuster comedies of the past few years. Plus, he was the only star of the movies to not reunite with the rest of the cast for their 10-year anniversary last year. I guess he's officially graduated and not interested in looking back.

The other big question is how the new series will fit in with the already announced High School Musical 4, which is apparently in the works. Last year, Disney announced its plans to continue the HSM franchise with a fourth movie, which is going to introduce a whole new cast of characters into East High. That movie has apparently been in the works for about a year and a half now with no updates on when we can expect it, who will be in it, or even what it will be about. Since both the fourth movie and this newly announced TV series are still relatively murky right now, there is the possibility that Disney decided to turn the fourth movie into the TV series. Or, more likely, they'll premiere the fourth movie ahead of the series to introduce all the new characters, and then base the TV show around those characters.

Obviously, there's still a lot that we can expect to hear about this new show before we finally get to see it in 2019, so stay tuned!