Almost 25 years after it became a global box office smash, Brit comedy The Full Monty — about a group of unemployed steelworkers turned amateur strippers — is officially returning as a TV series.
Developed by Searchlight and FX and now shooting in the U.K., the eight-episode limited series will premiere on Disney+ globally, Star+ in Latin America and Hulu in the U.S.
As well as reuniting the original’s Oscar-winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) and producer Uberto Pasolini (Nowhere Special), the series will see the return of the film’s lead cast, including Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, Once Upon a Time) as Gaz, Mark Addy (Game of Thrones, A Knight’s Tale) as Dave, Lesley Sharp (Before We Die, Scott and Bailey) as Jean, Hugo Speer (Britannia, Shadow and Bone) as Guy, Paul Barber (The Dumping Ground, Gloves Off) as Horse, Steve Huison (The Royle Family, The Navigators) as Lomper, Wim Snape (The Beaker Girls, Gentleman Jack) as Nathan and Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins, Michael Clayton) as Gerald. The show will also introduce a whole new cast of children and grandchildren of the returning characters.
The original Full Monty, made for just $3.5 million and directed by Peter Cattaneo, became a phenomenon after it was released in August 1997. Besides grossing more than $250 million globally, it pipped Titanic at the BAFTA Awards to win best film (it was briefly the highest grossing film in the U.K. until it was outsold by Titanic), and landed Academy Awards nominations for best picture, best director, best original screenplay and best original music, or comedy score, winning the last honor. It is still frequently listed as among the best British films ever made.
The small-screen return will follow the original band of brothers as they navigate the post-industrial city of Sheffield and society’s crumbling health care, education and employment sectors. The series will explore the brighter, sillier and more humane way forward where communal effort can still triumph over adversity. Whether there’ll be any stripping involved, Disney+ hasn’t confirmed.
“We’re chuffed to bits to get all the Monty Men back together again — now with a chaotic entourage of children, grandchildren, pets and assorted hangers-on — to see what life in Sheffield is like 25 years on,” said Beaufoy.
“Twenty-five years ago Simon introduced us to a group of funny, fearless and resilient unemployed working-class men from Sheffield and the world fell in love with them,” added Lee Mason, Disney’s director of scripted content EMEA. “We’re delighted to reunite the original cast for this brand-new series on Disney+ to catch up with these iconic characters and what they’ve been up to since we last saw them on stage in all their glory, and we can’t wait to introduce a host of exciting new faces and characters.”
The Full Monty series is created, written and executive produced by Beaufoy, executive produced by Pasolini, directed by Andrew Chaplin (Alma’s Not Normal) and Catherine Morshead (No Offence), and co-written by Alice Nutter, with Simon Lewis as series producer. Little Island Productions produces, with Mason exec producing.
Production is underway in Sheffield and Manchester.
