Disney is preparing to facilitate the crossover event of the year, and not a Marvel superhero or piece of pre-existing IP is in sight.
The casts of FXX‘s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and ABC‘s Abbott Elementary fully united for the first time in a photo shared by It’s Always Sunny star and creator Rob McElhenney from the set of the upcoming crossover.
“School’s out y’all,” he wrote on Instagram with the photo that featured his co-stars, wife Kaitlin Olson, Danny DeVito, Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day, as well as Abbott Elementary stars Janelle James, Lisa Ann Walter, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Chris Perfetti, Tyler James Williams and creator Quinta Brunson.
With Season 4 of Abbott largely focused on gentrification in the school’s Philly neighborhood, and Season 17 of It’s Always Sunny premiering in 2025, the plot details of the crossover are still unknown.
Brunson previously detailed how the “really exciting” crossover came to be as she appeared last week on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
“I was very inspired by watching a lot of shows over the pandemic,” she explained. “I was binging Family Matters and Full House and stuff like that, and I was shocked at how shocked I was when Steve Urkel showed up on the Full House set. I was screaming at my TV.”
The Golden Globe winner explained that she connected with McElhenney after social media comparisons of their shows, which are both set in the City of Brotherly Love.
“Something came up online, and he was like, ‘Someone said this seems like a Sunny episode, this seems like an Abbott episode,’” Brunson recalled. “And then we kind of connected over that. And then we really connected in person, and I just get along with him and his team so well, that we felt like we could actually do this.”
After teasing the crossover earlier this month, Brunson shared a photo from set with McElhenney and Day. “Season 4 of Abbott Elementary gets real Sunny,” she captioned the post.
Meanwhile, the cast of It’s Always Sunny celebrated the 20th anniversary of filming the pilot this week as McElhenney re-wore the same leather jacket for the crossover that he donned in the first episode.
“20 years ago these three kids made a pilot for FX called It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” wrote Howerton, who developed the show with McElhenney. “Today… 20 years later we start filming season 17. These kids didn’t know what they were doing, but they had a vision. Thank you to FX for trusting that vision. Thank you to our fans who preached the gospel from the start. We are eternally grateful.”
