How I Met Your Father, a spinoff to the long-running CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother, is heading to Hulu. The streamer has given the spinoff a straight-to-series order with Hilary Duff set to star.
It has been a long road to air for the spinoff. Back in 2014, HIMYM creators Craig Thomas & Carter Bays and Emily Spivey wrote a pilot for CBS that starred Greta Gerwig and Drew Tarver, but it wasn’t picked up by the network. Two and a half years later, Isaac Aptaker and Berger created a new take on the spinoff, but after the pair were elevated to co-showrunners of NBC’s This Is Us they were no longer available to do the project. Studio 20th Television tried again in the 2017-18 development season with You’re the Worst writer Alison Bennett, but again it did not move forward.
Hulu is now here to save the day. The platform has given the series a ten-episode order & Aptaker and Berger are back as creators, writers, and exec producers. On the spinoff, Duff stars as Sophie, who is telling her son the story of how she met his father, much like Josh Radnor (and Bob Saget’s) Ted Mosby did in the original series. The story starts in 2021 where Sophie and her close-knit group of friends are in the midst of figuring out who they are, what they want out of life, and how to fall in love in the age of dating apps and limitless options. Duff will also serve as a producer on the show.
How I Met Your Mother followed a father recounting to his children – through a series of flashbacks – the journey he and his four best friends took leading up to him meeting their mother. The series also starred Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan, Neil Patrick Harris, & Cobie Smulders.
