FOX has announced that Tim Allen comedy Last Man Standing has been revived for a seventh season.
“Last Man Standing ended too soon and the outcry from the fans has been deafening,” said Gary Newman and Dana Walden, chairmen and CEOs at Fox Television Group. “We’ve wanted to put the show back together since its final taping a year ago, and Tim never gave up hope either. Thanks to its millions of devoted viewers and the irrepressible Tim Allen, we haven’t seen the last of Last Man Standing.”
The series was one of the more controversial cancellations last season, as its rising costs and ABC’s lack of ownership kept it from seeing a seventh season on the Alphabet network. Star Tim Allen, the driving force behind this revival after holding up the show’s possible CMT revival last year due to salary demands, stoked the fire by claiming the show was cancelled because he was a conservative and comparing being a conservative in Hollywood to ’30s Germany. The huge success of the Roseanne revival, partially due to the comedienne’s conservative political views, along with FOX’s desire to shear its scripted budget and Last Man Standing‘s strong syndication success all helped push the show to a seventh season.
The great irony, though, is that if the Disney merger goes through, Last Man Standing won’t be owned by FOX. It’ll technically be a Disney property, so if the revival doesn’t make a case of itself through linear ratings, we could see it being cancelled again – this time for good.
Set to return for the revival are Nancy Travis, Jonathan Adams, Amanda Fuller, Christoph Sanders, and Jordan Masterson, with deals for other stars possibly still to come.
Last Man Standing is part of a big push toward multi-cams for FOX, which cancelled acclaimed single cams Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Last Man on Earth, and The Mick yesterday. The network has already ordered retirement commmunity-set The Cool Kids and Rel, a divorce comedy from Lil Rel Howery, for next season.
