'Glee' Co-creator Ryan Murphy Halts Possible 'Glee' Spinoff

Entertainment Tonight, Thursday, July 28, 2011, 8:04pm (PDT)

Entertainment Tonight.

Ryan Murphy, co-creator of FOX's runaway hit "Glee," has reportedly expressed a desire to expand the world of gleekdom with a new show featuring some of the sitcom's graduating cast members.

In an exclusive sit-down with Deadline Hollywood special correspondent Allison Hope Weiner, Ryan revealed that he started working on a spinoff featuring Lea Michele, Chris Colfer and Cory Monteith, but put the project on hold after some of the actors pretended to be clueless about leaving "Glee" at the end of season three.

"In March, [executive producer] Brad Falchuk and I started talking to all three of those actors about it because you can't make people do spinoffs," Ryan explained. "At the time, all three of them expressed interest."

On July 13, HollywoodReporter.com published an interview with Ryan, announcing that the three cast members would be graduating at the end of the upcoming season, sending the gleeks of the twitterverse into frenzy.

That night Chris Colfer told ET that he found out about the announcement via Twitter, saying, "We had kind of known since the beginning, since we started the show, that these characters were going to grow up and they were going to graduate eventually. I don't think I thought it was going to happen so soon, necessarily, but I think we knew something like this was coming."

"For any of those actors to say, 'I found out that I was fired off the show from Twitter,' is absolutely 100% not true," Ryan told Deadline. "We were going to do a spin-off where the three of them were going to go on. They all knew what was happening, they all had approved it, they all said they wanted to do it."

The show, which may or may not come into existence, would be set in New York City as Lea, Chris and Cory's characters go on to college at Julliard.

The season premiere of "Glee" airs September 20 on FOX.

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