Will There Be More ‘Monk’ Movies? Tony Shalhoub Is Up for That: ‘Maybe There Is More to Find’

This article contains spoilers for the Peacock movie “Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie”

“Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie,” which premiered on Peacock on Friday, brought back Tony Shalhoub as beloved detective Adrian Monk — but was it really the obsessive sleuth’s final case?

“If people have a strong appetite for more, and whether the network wants to do it,” Shalhoub is game to play the role again, he told TheWrap in an interview. “It’s certainly not up to me, but, maybe, yeah — maybe there is more to mine out of it.”

The TV movie, which was written by Andy Breckman, hinted that it could have been Monk’s final adventure. Monk was feeling more depressed than usual and had a definite plan to commit suicide, in order to be with his late wife Trudy (Melora Hardin).

Before he can implement that plan, however, Monk appears to have been killed in a fall over a cliff, in a nod to the classic Sherlock Holmes “Reichenbach Falls” installment in an allegedly final battle with Moriarty. But like Holmes, Monk is far from dead and returns to nail the villain who tried to kill him.

In the final scene, Monk is still intent on joining Trudy… until his wife’s ghost introduces him to the other grateful victims whose cases he’s solved. Monk resolves to keep living and, we assume, keep solving cases.

TheWrap: You had us worried that this really might be Monk’s last case at a few points.

Tony Shalhoub: Knowing Andy Breckman the writer as well as I do, he’s always got a little bit of irony, and I think maybe him calling it “Mr. Monk’s Last Case” is as much of a tease as it is a title.

If tw movie has good ratings, would you welcome a chance to do a series of movies, perhaps?

I mean, we’ll see how this movie plays out there in the world. And if people have a strong appetite for more, and whether the network wants to do it. It’s certainly not up to me, but, maybe, yeah — maybe there is more to mine out of it.

At the end of the series, I really thought we’d gone down every dark alley, in every comedic arena. And you know, we kind of exhausted it.

But then we ended on a high note, of course. But now maybe given the shape of the world since COVID, maybe there is more to find.

It’ll be so interesting to see [if it] bring[s] people back into the tent.

I’m sure you’ve seen that another USA series, “Suits,” has been huge on streaming this year, and now they’re planning a new “Suits” series. This could revive interest in the original series, I imagine.

It wouldn’t hurt. Yeah.

What was it like revisiting the character after all this time?

Going into it, I have to admit, I was a little bit concerned. Would we be able to recapture it? Would I be able to find the voice of the character, again? Fourteen years is a long time. And I’ve done a number of projects, of course, in between there.

And also, full disclosure, I sometimes have a difficult time with reboots. They can be a little hit or miss. People think they want to revisit a story or a group of characters, and then come to find out that they really don’t.

I was concerned that maybe our show was just of that decade. But once we got into it, probably by the end of the first day, it really started to all come back and feel like the right thing at the right time.

“Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie” is now streaming on Peacock, as are all episodes of “Monk.”

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