West Wing reboot? Aaron Sorkin has a few ideas to bring it back

More than 25 years after the show first aired, Aaron Sorkin is considering a return to The West Wing.

Following a visit to the actual White House, Sorkin told Variety the experience had made him take the idea of a new The West Wing series more seriously.

“I didn’t think about it seriously, frankly, until today… We’ll see what happens when I wake up tomorrow. But, if you’re asking me now, this is how I feel,” Sorkin said.

“I just got a couple of ideas for episodes just walking around the White House. Like, ‘why didn’t we ever do this? Why didn’t we ever do that?”

The cast of the show visited the real White House to commemorate the series’s 25th anniversary, including Martin Sheen.

Sorkin does note today’s politics would make it harder than ever to make The West Wing, which was written in an era long before Donald Trump had turbo-charged the enmity between the left and right.

“The worry would be that everything we did on the show would be seen as a rebuttal to the world of Donald Trump,” says Sorkin. “We couldn’t possibly come up with stories in the room that are crazier than the actual stories that we see.”

Just as important, there’s no guarantee a new series of The West Wing would be able to recapture the magic of the old cast.

Martin Sheen is currently 84 years old, and would presumably not return to the role.

“I suspect that a new president would have a hard time living up to people’s memories of Martin,” says Sorkin. “But maybe enough time has gone by and it’s a whole new generation.”

Who could replace him is a rabbit hole you could truly get lost down. Can you picture Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Bradley Cooper, Margot Robbie, Denzel Washington or Jeremy Renner taking this one on?

It’s a big pair of shoes to fill.

There were seven seasons of the original run of The West Wing, the last episode broadcast on 2006.

Want to return to those cosier days? US viewers can stream the show on Max, while it’s available on Channel 4’s streaming service in the UK.

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