A whole bunch of stories are popping up right now claiming that a new, updated version of Full House — starring adult versions of D.J. and Stephanie Tanner — is being developed by the show’s original creator, Jeff Franklin. Here are a few:
From The Inquisitor:
Remember the good old days of ABC’s TGIF lineup? It was a time before people watched their shows on their mobile devices. Well, word is out that one of its beloved family shows may be making a comeback. Rumor has it that Full House may make its return as a spinoff series. Series creator Jeff Franklin let the cat out of the bag that he’s planning on a series around the two oldest Tanner girls.
From Perez Hilton:
But could the TGIF fave really work today?
Why not? Everywhere you look, Full House is playing somewhere in syndication. In fact, when the show got cancelled in 1994, it was still pulling in 11 million viewers!
From Broadway World:
According to DisneyTreasures.com, one of TV’s most beloved series from the ’90s, Full House, may be returning to TV featuring the Tanner children, D.J. and Stephanie, now full-grown adults, along with their family members Danny, Joey, Jesse and Rebecca.
News of a reboot of the popular ABC series was first reported in the Newport Gazette, in which series creator Jeff Franklin revealed that work was underway for a sequel. Franklin also shared that the majority of the cast had already expressed an interest in reprising their original roles.
From Yahoo!
The news came from Jeff Franklin, who created the iconic series. He told the Newport Gazette (via), “Last month I was asked by ABC and [Warner Bros.] to write a new show for the Full House characters.” Reportedly the show would revolve around D.J. and Stephanie Tanner, who would be played by actresses who are now 37 and 31, respectively.
Should Candace Cameron Bure and Jodie Sweetin be asked to, and want to, return, they would not be alone as Franklin also said, “Everyone I’ve spoken with were very open to the idea [of returning].”
Sounds great! Except for the fact that it’s total hooey, as any one of those outlets could have confirmed by clicking back through the sources they blindly linked to. (Or, in Perez Hilton’s case, the sources he pulled the information from without linking to, because why just be sloppy when you can be sloppy AND unethical, right?)
All of the stories link to a post dated October 27, 2013 at a site called Disney Treasures. But when you click on the “Newport Gazette” link in the Disney Treasures text, it goes not to an interview in a publication called The Newport Gazette, but rather to this image:
Which tells us that none of the stories even did that tiny bit of legwork, choosing instead to pull the Gazette’s quotes straight from the secondary source without so much as clicking on the original. This is hilarious. Moving on.
The URL for the April Fool’s image contains ScreenRant’s web address, so I Googled “Screenrant + full house,” and the top result was this story, which is an April Fool’s post from earlier this year. It looked really familiar, so I went back and checked it against the Disney Treasures story, and, yup, exactly the same. Lifted word-for-word and link-for-link, and posted on their site last week. (Hence the April Fool’s image in the Disney Treasures text.) Just to be safe, I dialed up the Newport Gazette to see if there was any truth to the story buried inside the madness, but I was unable to get a comment from them on the record because they are a Rhode Island newspaper that went out of print in 1799, and everyone who worked there has been dead for well over 100 years.
So, to recap: Multiple outlets are reporting the existence of a hot new show based on a seven month old April Fool’s joke that was completely plagiarized by some shady knockoff Disney merchandise site and posted as BREAKING NEWS, and the whole thing could have been prevented with a grand total of 30 seconds worth of research.
A+ work all around, gang.
