How I Met Your Mother Won't Live on With Dad Series...At Least for Now

A source close to the project confirms How I Met Your Dad won't become a series

By Kristin Dos Santos, Chris Harnick Jul 11, 2014 1:42 PMTags
Greta GerwigAstrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Glamour

The world of How I Met Your Mother is done for...at least for now.

The long-running CBS comedy series ended this year and co-creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas prepped a spinoff of sorts, How I Met Your Dad, for CBS for the 2014-2015 season. Set to star Greta Gerwig with Meg Ryan providing narration, the show was considered shoe in for a series order by CBS...until it wasn't ordered.

How I Met Your Dad is "definitely dead for now. And nothing further is happening with it at the moment," a source close to the project said.

During their Upfront press call in May, CBS' Nina Tassler said the pilot it wasn't what they had hoped it would be. "[T]here were elements of the pilot that didn't work out," Tassler said, but the brass at the network "love this show and we love these producers." "I'm heartsick," she told reporters. "We love this brand and we love this show, but it didn't work out."

At the time, Tassler said the network reached out to Bays and Thomas about rejiggering some elements, but a source told E! News producers and the studio didn't want to redo the pilot without a series order from CBS.

The show was being shopped around to other networks, including Fox, but nobody bit. Gerwig and the rest of the cast have been let out of their contracts.

"HIMYD was fun to work on, terrific cast, terrific writer [Emily Spivey], but it's over now and we have other stuff we want to do," Bays tweeted. "Maybe in the future it could be something, but I think we need to try something new before we go back to it. To everyone who wanted to see it, I'm sorry. (And to everyone who didn't, you're welcome!)"