Johnny Galecki to produce a Vacation spin-off series for HBO Max

By Sam Barsanti | December 12, 2019 | 6:13pm

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Johnny Galecki to produce a Vacation spin-off series for HBO Max

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The USA Network has somehow managed to make a TV show based on the days in the Purge universe when all crime isn’t legal, so now HBO Max is doing something similar with The Griswolds, a series about the family from the Vacation movies and what they do when they’re not, you know, on vacation. This comes from Deadline, which says the series is coming The Middle writer Tim Hobert and Big Bang Theory’s Johnny Galecki, who played Rusty in Christmas Vacation and is on board as a producer with Alcide Bava Productions.

The show is going to be set in the “suburbs of modern-day Chicago,” but Deadline doesn’t specifically say if it’ll reboot the timeline entirely or operate in some alternate universe where all of the members of the Griswold family look a little different than the last time we saw them (which would at least be a pretty common occurrence for the Vacation series). Maybe Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo will show up here? Or Ed Helms and Christina Applegate from the 2015 sequel/reboot? We should probably assume that none of them will, but HBO Max certainly has some money it can throw at celebrities if it’s serious about this thing.