HBO’s ‘Girls’ Is Getting a Revival, and Everyone’s Officially in Their Forties

Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet and Andrew Rannells return for a five-episode limited run.

Summary

HBO has ordered a five-episode limited revival of 'Girls,' reuniting creator and star Lena Dunham with the show’s core ensemble

The returning cast steps up as co-executive producers, while Adam Driver and former co-showrunner Jenni Konner are absent from the project

The new chapter shifts the show’s focus from its characters’ messy twenties to the milestone of turning 40

HBO is officially bringing back Girls, ordering a five-episode limited revival of the comedy a decade after its original 2012-17 run came to a close. Creator and star Lena Dunham returns as Hannah alongside Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet and Andrew Rannells, with production scheduled to begin in 2027.

The revival marks one of the first big comedy pickups at the now Skydance-owned HBO, which is keeping plot details under wraps for the moment and released a short promotional video to tease the return. Dunham will executive produce alongside Judd Apatow, who held the same role on the original series, as well as Ilene S. Landress and Michael P. Cohen of her production company Good Thing Going. In a notable shift from the first run, Williams, Kirke, Mamet and Rannells are all credited as co-executive producers, giving the ensemble a stake behind the camera as well as in front of it.

Just as telling is who isn’t coming back. Adam Driver, who played Hannah’s volatile on-and-off boyfriend, is not listed among the returning cast, a detail that lands months after Dunham’s memoir Famesick recounted his on-set temper. Jenni Konner, who co-ran the original series with Dunham across all six seasons, is also not involved, following the pair’s decision to dissolve their producing partnership in 2018.

According to Dunham, the revival only came together once the characters found their way back to her. “We always said we would only return to Girls if there was a specific story we were burning to tell,” she said in a statement. “I’ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t quite picture them in the present day. Then, right around my 40th birthday, they started talking to me in the shower.”

That age shift is central to the new chapter’s pitch. “We’re thrilled to have Lena turn her gaze from the tumult of one’s twenties to the milestone of turning 40,” said Amy Gravitt, HBO and HBO Max’s executive vice president and head of comedy programming, in a statement. Revisiting the characters at that stage gives the series a chance to answer what became of a group that once seemed permanently stuck at the start of adulthood.

The return also reopens one of the most debated shows of its era. Though Girls never posted blockbuster numbers for HBO, it became a lightning rod for conversations about millennials, with critics and audiences treating it as a key to understanding the generation, despite Hannah’s famously hedged pilot-episode claim to speak for her peers. The show also proved an awards magnet, collecting two Emmys and 17 additional nominations over six seasons, including two nods for outstanding comedy series, plus Golden Globe wins for both the series and Dunham after its first season, along with Writers Guild and Directors Guild honors. It also served as an early launchpad for much of its cast, with Driver going on to star in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

Production on the Girls limited revival is set to begin in 2027 for HBO, with a premiere date yet to be announced.