‘Key & Peele’ to End After Current Season
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele announced Saturday that their acclaimed sketch comedy series Key & Peele will end after its fifth season, which is currently airing on Comedy Central. Peele broke the news to fans by simply linking to a story on The Wrap regarding the series’ fate after these final eight episodes.
“This is our final season – and it’s not because of Comedy Central, it’s us,” Key said. “It was just time for us to explore other things, together and apart. I compare it to Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. We might make a movie and then do our own thing for three years and then come back and do another movie. I’m thinking we could do that every three years – take a year, go bang out a movie. That’s the plan right now.”
After working together on MADtv for six years, in 2012 the two comics launched Key & Peele, their own sketch comedy show that soon became one of Comedy Central’s most acclaimed original series and, as Rolling Stone proclaimed in 2013, TV’s funniest show.
Thanks to sketches like their annual viral hit “East/West Bowl,” “Obama’s Anger Translator” and “I Said Bitch,” the show’s popularity grew each season, resulting in numerous Emmy nominations – eight at this year’s Emmy Awards, including an Outstanding Variety Sketch Series nod – plus an invite by President Barack Obama to bring Key’s Luther the Anger Translator to the White House Press Correspondents Dinner.
The duo have known for awhile that this would be the final Key & Peele season but they recently decided to share the show’s fate with fans. The series’ final eight episodes have already finished shooting.
“There will be Key & Peele productions coming up,” Key told The Wrap. “We’re doing the reboot of Police Academy, and there’s a TV show in the works that we might do for Comedy Central. There’s lots of stuff we have cooking up.” It was first announced in April 2014 that Key and Peele would produce the Police Academy reboot, and while not much news of that remake has surfaced in the past 15 months, it’s clear that the film is still in the works in some capacity.
“Wait till you see what we do next tho,” Peele tweeted. The duo have already filmed their upcoming movie Keanu, which was co-written by Peele and helmed by Key & Peele director Peter Atencio.