Remember when Madison Montgomery (Emma Roberts) said, “Surprise, bitch. I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me” on American Horror Story: Coven? That’s Kenya Barris. Specifically, that’s his -Ish franchise. You know the old phrase, “how now, brown cow?” Well, Kenya has been milking his own cows (aka his -Ish franchise) for as long as he can. This time, he’s reportedly milking a brown one.
That’s right, shortly after it was announced that Black-ish would be ending with its eighth season (and one of its spinoffs Mixed-ish was canceled after its second season), news surfaced about a possible new spinoff in development. Apparently, Kenya wants to paint with all the colors of the wind because it appears he is developing a Latinx family series with actress Eva Longoria. Plot twist-ish!
Yeah yeah yeah, I inserted yet another -Ish pun. Hey, if Kenya can milk cows forever, I can beat this dead-ish horse joke. There it is again!
“Brown-ish is still a concept that is in development, we haven’t rolled out the firm plans around that yet,” Hulu’s Sr. VP, Head of Content, Craig Erwich told Deadline on Tuesday. “On Old-ish, we have no current plans to make it as a pilot.”
Interestingly enough, it was reported back in July 2020 that Kenya had one more -Ish series up his sleeve. Turns out, that series was Old-ish, starring Laurence Fishburne and Jenifer Lewis. Well, I guess he technically never said that was the last-ever one. Semantics! Besides, even if he were to retire out of the game-ish (a la Jay-Z), he would probably realize he can’t stay away from -Ish too long and return anyway (a la Jay-Z).
“When we talk about the world of Black-ish, there are so many different iterations that we are open to; it’s really up to Kenya who is the master and the captain of the franchise,” Erwich added.
Again if it’s up to Kenya (and the networks who will continue to greenlight it), this may go on forever. Though there is some -Ish franchise fatigue, some folks on Twitter joked that we might as well go all the way with representation.
Either way, it’s still too early in the process to do anything beyond speculation as we don’t know whether ABC (or one of its family tree members) will pick up the show. So until we know for sure, we’ll just go about our (busy!!!) day and wait for more news to report...ish.