West Wing Cast to Reunite for HBO MAX Special

The West Wing cast and creators are set to return to the Oval Office. Sort of.

Variety reports Aaron Sorkin, Martin Sheen, Rob Lowe and the rest of the ensemble cast of the Emmy Award winning political drama are set to work together again for the first time in almost 20 years for a special, that will stream on HBO MAX.

The special will be entitled A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote is being timed to hit the WarnerMedia owned streaming service this fall to perfectly take advantage of the upcoming US election and will filmed at Los Angeles’ Orpheum Theater where there will be a staging of the series’ third season episode Hartsfield’s Landing.

Alongside Sheen and Lowe, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Dulé Hill and others will reprise their respective characters from the show and Sorkin will pen new material made specifically for the special. More cast members and guests will be announced in the coming days and weeks.

This seems like a creative and timely way for HBO MAX to not only gain subscribers to the three month old service but also to use one of their treasured library series to encourage viewers about the importance of voting. This isn’t the only reunion special HBO MAX has in the works. The streamer was hoping to have a program that would bring the cast of Friends back together and was meant to premiere on its launch date. However, the pandemic shutdown has forced an indefinite delay. With The West Wing, however, Sorkin and company will have the benefit of using the newly implemented COVID Safe Way Forward Protocols which will have the cast and crew be able to stage the production under new safe guidelines.

Premiering in 1999 on NBC, The West Wing was one of the most acclaimed and decorated dramas in television history. Over its seven year run, the show won 27 Emmy Awards, including four consecutive Outstanding Drama Series awards, in addition to numerous other awards from different organizations. Sorkin left the series in 2003 and producer John Wells assumed show-running duties until its end in 2006. Wells is also set to return to the reunion special.

There is certainly going to be a lot of curiosity and excitement over the reunion of this modern television classic that seems like a hybrid between a reunion special and a throwback to the Golden Age of Television Drama in the 50s where live television anthologies were all the rage.

Filming on The West Wing reunion should begin shortly and premiere on HBO MAX shortly before the November 3 US election.