NEED TO KNOW
Frankie Muniz’s 40th birthday was marked with a gift to his fans.
On Friday, Dec. 5, Hulu revealed that the Malcolm in the Middle four-episode revival series, Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair, will premiere in 2026 on the streamer, and shared the first teaser, which paid homage to one of the sitcom’s most iconic scenes.
The brief teaser showed an electric razor shaving someone’s hairy back — a reference to a scene from the pilot episode of the show, which aired in 2000, and saw Lois (Jane Kaczmarek) shaving her husband Hal’s (Bryan Cranston) very hairy body in the kitchen while three of their four sons — Malcolm (Muniz), Dewey (Erik Per Sullivan) and Reese (Justin Berfield) — watched.
The four-episode limited series will see Malcolm “dragged back into [his family’s orbit]
when Hal and Lois demand his presence at their 40th anniversary party,” after he’s shielded himself and his daughter “from his family for over a decade,” per the official synopsis.
News broke in December last year that the revival series had been greenlit, and would see Cranston, 69, and Muniz reunite, alongside Kaczmarek, Berfield and Christopher Masterson.
Per Sullivan will not be returning as Dewey, though, and his character was recast, with Caleb Ellsworth-Clark stepping in to play Dewey, while Anthony Timpano will play the family’s youngest son, fifth child Jamie.
Cranston explained on a recent podcast appearance that he talked to Per Sullivan, 34, about the revival series, but his former onscreen son has shifted careers since the sitcom.
“I talked to Erik and I said, ‘Hey, we got the show! It’s going to come back.’ He goes, ‘Oh, that’s fantastic!’ And I go, ‘Yeah, so we’re looking forward to having you back.’ He goes, ‘Oh, no, no, I don’t want to do it. But it’s fantastic,’ ” Cranston said on Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade in June.
“He’s actually going to Harvard. He’s really, really smart, and he’s getting his master’s at Harvard right now,” Cranston revealed. “He said, ‘Oh God, no, I haven’t acted since I was 9 or something. So I’m not into it.’ ”
Frankie Muniz/Instagram
Muniz has teased that the revival series is “pretty shocking,” but he thinks fans will be “very happy with what they came up with.”
“It’s hard to fit in 20 years of stuff in four 30-minute episodes,” he said on the Lightweights Podcast with Joe Vulpis in September.
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Muniz, who has stepped away from acting recently to focus on NASCAR racing, said that he had “the best time of my entire life, I’m not exaggerating, filming this reboot.”
“I loved it so much, way more than I ever thought I could have,” he admitted.
Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair will premiere in 2026 on Hulu and Hulu with Disney+
