It seems a spin-off of How I Met Your Mother is in development once again. After 2014’s failed How I Met Your Dad, Deadline is reporting the concept is being revived as How I Met Your Father with This Is Us writers and producers Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger heading the new project.
The series will be a departure from How I Met Your Mother focusing on an entirely new cast of characters. The only similarity between the shows will be the basic story premise of a mother telling the story – presumably to her children – of how she met their father. Original series creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays will also serve as executive producers of How I Met Your Father, but whether or not they will be involved in a more extensive role is unknown.
Thomas and Bays were originally set to showrun How I Met Your Dad with Emily Spivey, going so far as to writing and filming a pilot with Greta Gerwig as the central character just as How I Met Your Mother was ending its nine season run. Given HIMYM‘s huge popularity, it was a big shock that CBS decided not to pick it up for a series order during the upfronts that year, though HIMYM‘s controversial series finale may have had something to do with that.
Right now there is no script for How I Met Your Father, but production company 20th TV is apparently looking internally to have a spec script written. There’s no word on when or even if it will go on the market either; the series doesn’t necessarily have to go to CBS since it doesn’t follow any of the original characters, leaving it possible that another network could pick it up.
