'Glee' Spin-off? Not Anymore, According to Ryan Murphy

Anyone following coverage of Fox's hit musical "Glee" might be getting whiplash from all the differing stories. One day Lea Michele, Chris Colfer and Cory Monteith are graduating and off the show and the next day they're not. Are they leaving or staying? It hasn't helped that the show's executive producers are constantly changing their story. Ryan Murphy says they're going one second and the next Brad Falchuk says they're staying.

So what's the true story? In an interview with Deadline Hollywood, Murphy denied that any of the show's stars had ever been fired. Instead Murphy shared that the producers had been talking to the stars portraying Rachel, Finn and Kurt about a different way off the show: a spin-off.

The idea was to spin-off some of the graduating seniors to a show set in New York that would tentatively be set in the performing arts school Julliard. Murphy shared that he and fellow producers were only in the pitching stages but had started to open up communications with Julliard about the show.

This all fell apart, according to Murphy, due to two factors: the media and the actors. In Murphy's woe-is-me retelling the media latching on to his words about the characters leaving the show and the actor's reactions to being ostensibly "fired" ruined the spin-off. Never mind that Murphy was the one that brought up the characters possible departure in the first place. How could he have known the media would report on some of the most popular actors on the show leaving? Who could foresee such a thing?

He also heavily blamed the actors themselves for reacting to the firing news. In the interview he said the three actors involved were all aware of the plans for the spin-off, which was in too premature a stage to be publicly discussed.

"For any of those actors to say, ‘I found out that I was fired off the show from Twitter,’ is absolutely 100% not true. None of them were fired. It was never about that. 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.," Murphy told Deadline Hollywood.

What's going to happen with the spin-off now?

"We were actively talking to actors, we were actively writing, we were actively getting ready to pitch. OK, here’s the three actors, and they want to do it, so here’s the story for them. Now that that has collapsed. We’re not talking about it, we’re not pitching it. We’re not doing anything for the next several months except for this third season," Murphy said.

So the spin-off isn't completely off the table, but it certainly has been shelved for the moment. With all the behind-the-scenes drama this whole mess has caused and the rising stars of Michele and Colfer especially, it seems doubtful the spin-off will be strutting into Julliard anytime soon.

Perhaps Murphy has learned an important lesson about watching what he says to the press, but I sincerely doubt it. This is the same man who lambasted Kings of Leon for not allowing the show to use their music.

What do you think about Murphy's comments? Would you watch the spin-off if it ever became a reality?