UPDATED: A viral trailer that purports to announce the return of beloved HBO comedy Eastbound & Down is fake, Consequence can confirm.
Danny McBride’s cult classic about a former baseball player ran for four seasons between 2009 and 2013, before McBride moved on to other projects, including Vice Principles and The Righteous Gemstones. But demand for more Eastbound & Down remains high, as evidenced by the hoax Season 5 announcement, which amassed tens of thousands of likes, retweets, and comments in a matter of hours.
An unverified account with the handle @KennyPowers — the same name as McBride’s character — shared the fake trailer in a tweet on September 6th. “THE PITCH IS BACK,” it read, promising, “One more inning” in “2024.” But no such project is in the works, and instead McBride and his team are still in production on Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones, which was announced earlier this year.
The creator of the @KennyPowers handle was not reachable, but the account had been devoted to posting Eastbound & Down quotes until 2017, when it went dormant. Unfortunately, this comeback is quite a bit less fun than Powers’ own journey in Eastbound & Bound, but you can still indulge your nostalgia by checking out the fake trailer below.
THE PITCH IS BACK. 2024.⚾ #Eastbound pic.twitter.com/64JtGFbAuT
— Eastbound & Down (@KennyPowers) September 6, 2022
Update: While the trailer is no longer online due to a report from the copyright owner, representatives from “odd-service creative agency” I’m Excited tell Consequence via Twitter DM what led them to create this:
We are longtime admirers of everything Danny McBride and Jody Hill have brought us — from The Foot Fist Way to The Righteous Gemstones — but Eastbound has always had a real soft spot in our hearts. We’re an entertainment-only creative agency that has had a bit of a rough go this year and have kind of felt a little like Kenny in recent times, steadily working towards our comeback. Revisiting the series for fun, we cut together this little teaser of show footage to bring back a small dose of the KP character to everyone’s wild lives and to prove to ourselves we still have what it takes in this town – 800k+ views before noon confirmed both of those things to us!
