Fox Pushes Back ‘Glee’ Season Premiere
Fox Network and the producer of Glee have decided to delay the start of the new season in the wake of last week’s death of Cory Monteith. The series had been scheduled to begin its fifth season on September 19 in order to get a jump on the fall TV season. That would have allowed Glee to get four original episodes aired before the musical series could potentially could run into a postseason baseball interruption. Two episodes of the new season had been written before the cast and show creatives went on hiatus — episodes on which Monteith’s character Finn Hudson was to have appeared. They would have marked the actor’s return to the show after leaving early last season to enter drug rehab.
Monteith was found dead Saturday in a Vancouver hotel room; a hotel staffer discovered his body after the actor missed his checkout time. Early autopsy reports indicate that the 31-year-old Monteith, who said he had struggled with drug addiction since his early teens, died of an overdose.
The one-week premiere delay to September 26 gives Glee creator Ryan Murphy and the writers more time to rewrite those episodes and consider how to most respectfully deal with the death of the actor who became a breakout star on the high school musical series.
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