While Home Improvement might be ripe for a reboot, Tim Allen has confirmed what’s preventing the show from returning.
After making a name for himself in stand-up comedy, Allen rose to prominence in the early 1990s when he was cast as Home Improvement’s lead character, Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor. The series had a healthy eight-season run on ABC from 1991 to 1999, and the actor has expressed interest in doing a new version of Home Improvement. According to him, however, this is proving difficult to realize because of two of the classic sitcom’s other series regulars.
In an interview with Us Weekly, Allen shared that “issues” with Zachery Ty Bryan and Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who played Tool Man’s sons Brad and Randy, respectively, are stopping Home Improvement from getting a revival. In his words:
They keep talking about how it could move forward, but they get stuck [because] there are some personality problems right now with the boys. They’ve got their own issues. I always thought it would be cool if it was a story about them. That’s a little challenging right now, to put it mildly.
Though Allen didn’t elaborate upon these “issues” with Bryan and Thomas, they are known to the public. In Thomas’ case, he retired from acting in 2006, then briefly returned to the profession in the mid-2010s to appear on a few episodes of Last Man Standing, one of Allen’s other popular TV shows. In 2024, Patricia Richardson, who played Jill Taylor on Home Improvement, said that Thomas “is not really interested in acting, he wants to direct and write.”
As for Bryan, he’s dealt with a variety of legal issues since the start of the decade, starting with a DUI in late 2020. In December 2025, Bryan was arrested for the sixth time in five years. This past February, he was sentenced to 16 months in prison after pleading guilty to DUI in California, and in March, he was sentenced to an additional 19 months in an Oregon prison after admitting to three probation violations.
So, between Bryan’s incarceration and Thomas’ disinterest in acting, as well as Taran Noah Smith, who played Mark Taylor on Home Improvement, having left acting in 1999, that takes Tim and Jill’s sons out of the equation. Additionally, Earl Hindman, who played the Taylors’ never-fully-seen next-door neighbor Wilson in the popular 1990s sitcom, died in 2003.
As a result, the only remaining two series regulars left from Home Improvement who could join Allen and Richardson for a hypothetical revival are Richard Karn and Debbie Dunning, who played Al Borland and Heidi Keppert, respectively. Dunning also retired from acting in 2006, although she did appear as a guest star with Richardson and Karn in the season 2 premiere of Shifting Gears, Allen’s current sitcom, last year. Regardless, it sounds like there are too many obstacles stopping Home Improvement from being brought back for a new generation, leaving it as a time capsule of the 1990s.
Fortunately for fans of the original series, it can be streamed on both Netflix and Hulu. Allen will be back as auto restoration shop owner Matt Parker when Shifting Gears season 3 premieres on ABC at a yet-to-be-determined date. He can also be heard reprising Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 5, starting June 19.
- Release Date
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1991 – 1999-00-00
- Showrunner
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Tim Allen
- Directors
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Peter Bonerz, Andrew Tsao, Andy Cadiff, Albert Alarr, Patricia Richardson, Richard Compton
- Writers
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Lloyd Garver, Jennifer Celotta, Charlie Hauck, Eric Horsted, Susan Estelle Jansen, David Maples, Tracy Gamble, Peter Tolan, Allison M. Gibson
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Patricia Richardson
Jill Taylor