This Two-Season Comedy From Two Decades Ago Is Somehow In The Reboot Rumor Mill

For almost 18 years, Bryan Fuller’s quirky ABC comedy-drama Pushing Daisies has been dead and buried – but when it comes to The Piemaker, death doesn’t need to be so permanent.

In 2007, ABC took a risk and greenlit an ambitious, idiosyncratic and completely original project from an up-and-coming creator in a move that is nearly unheard-of in today’s television business. Pushing Daisies told the story of Ned, a restaurant-owner with the supernatural ability to bring people back from the dead (though terms and conditions apply), in a completely unique visual style, winning over a small but passionate following with its panache and heart. Then, the very next year and with viewership flagging, ABC cancelled Pushing Daisies after just two seasons and 22 total episodes.

Ever since then, the small but fiercely devoted Pushing Daisies following has been banging the drum for a revival while critics turned the series into a mainstay on every single list of “TV Shows That Were Cancelled Too Soon.” Meanwhile, Fuller has been pitching any network that will listen on a Pushing Daisies reboot, telling The Mary Sue earlier this week that “we're working on a Season Three.”

“The whole cast wants to come back,” Fuller explained of the momentum of his Pushing Daisies reboot efforts, “And, we’ve got a whole story. We’re trying to do another season this year.” While Fuller's claim that everyone from the original series is full-steam-ahead on a new season in 2026 – that's probably what he meant by ”this year," unless they're making it with Sora 2 – Pushing Daisies die-hards know that we've been down this road before with the creator's endless optimism.

Right around the time when Pushing Daisies met its original end, Fuller began work on a comic book series that, in his mind, would finish out the main story if ABC cut show short before its natural conclusion. However, by 2010, DC comics shut down the intended publishing company for the Pushing Daisies print version, forcing Fuller to abandon the project.

Fuller also explored turning Pushing Daisies into a miniseries, a film and even a Broadway musical, but none of those plans panned out either. However, much like how Ned feels about Chuck, Fuller simply is not willing to let his project stay dead.

While Fuller seems to be convinced that this much-anticipated Pushing Daisies Season Three is finally around the corner, based on how past efforts to bring back the franchise have gone, it's hard to have faith that we'll ever see more of the magical, colorful, storybook-like world that a small handful of fanatics fell in love with back during the Bush Administration.

On top of that, do we really want a Pushing Daisies reboot nearly twenty years after the fact? Industry titans like ABC take so few risks on bold new shows nowadays, and, in the zero-sum game of broadcast television, every timeslot taken up by a rehash of an old IP is one that can't go to the next Pushing Daisies, and the next Fuller.

Time will tell if Fuller can get his long-awaited third season on the air, but if he does succeed, we'll finally have some closure – Pushing Daisies can't come back from the dead twice.