Actor, writer, director, and producerJohn Krasinskisurprised the world two months ago by launching a weekly YouTube series calledSome Good News,in which he highlighted only “good news” stories from around the world while also bringing joy in the form ofThe OfficereunionsandsurpriseHamiltonperformances. Krasinski then surprised again when news broke last week that he wassellingSome Good Newsto CBS, which would continue the show with Krasinski in an executive producer role, although not in a hosting capacity.
The sale wasn’t entirely surprising. Krasinski is a very busy guy as the star of Amazon’sJack Ryanand a successful filmmaker in his own right with theA Quiet Placefranchise, and when productions can resume, he can’t exactly be available to put together and record a new episode ofSome Good Newsevery week.
Indeed, Krasinski revealed this was part of the reason he made the decision to sellSome Good Newsto CBS while appearing onThe Officeco-starRainn Wilson’sInstagram Live Soul Pancake series “Hey There, Human”:
“Well it’s funny, it was one of those things where I was only planning on doing eight of them during quarantine, because I have these other things that I’m going to be having to do very soon likeJack Ryanand all this other stuff. But more than that, it was something that writing, directing, and producing with a couple of my friends was so much [that] I knew it wouldn’t be sustainable with my prior commitments.”
So Krasinski had one of two options: end the show, or sell it.But it turns out selling the show to an entity like CBS was kind of serendipitous:
“I knew the two options were always gonna be that I leave it off with eight in my office—which I would love to keep doing this show from my office forever, [but] it just wasn’t sustainable. So I’d need a partner coming on. And it’s funny, in the first episode I said, ‘Why isn’t there a news show dedicated entirely to good news?’ and now we have one of the biggest news programs in America, CBS News, saying that they want to make it part of their permanent news cycle, which is insane. The fact that we were able to accomplish that—in eight weeks it went from not existing to now being on one of these huge news networks—is honestly one of the most amazing honors I’ve ever been able to pull off. And again, it was all due to the community and to the people.”
While firm plans for how the show will continue are unclear, Krasinski did say he’ll come back to host every now and again, and even hinted at having Rainn Wilson be a guest host at some point:
“We have a lot of fun stuff planned and I can’t wait to dig in. I’m gonna be a part of it whenever I can, and I’m gonna host a couple, and bring on a different community of people—maybeyou.”
So yes, one imagines Krasinski was paida lotof money to sellSome Good News, but its new home is actually exactly what he was looking to achieve: a regular dose of good-news-only television, now available on one of the biggest and longest-running broadcast TV networks in history. That’s a nice thing!
Next up for Krasinski, he’ll be shooting Season 3 ofJack Ryan, and he’s alsoalready developingA Quiet Place Part IIIshould the first sequel succeed at the box office.A Quiet Place 2was originally supposed to be released in March 2020, but was one of the first films pulled from release in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. It’ll now hit theaters this September.
Watch the full, delightful chat between Krasinski and Wilson below.
