‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ future unclear after season 10

(Update: Howerton has said publicly that the Rolling Stone reporter accidentally misquoted him, and while his contract is up after next season, the show may still do more.) Sad news coming out today: The sun is finally going to be setting on Philadelphia. After a decade of being the most underrated comedy out there, and also the wild child that critics routinely want to put in the corner and ignore, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” will end after the show’s tenth season on FXX next year.

This news was first confirmed by Dennis Reynolds himself in Glenn Howerton, who told Rolling Stone recently that this was not an issue of the team getting bored, hating each other, or even of executives wanting to develop other projects. It’s really just all about going on and doing something different, and quitting while you’re ahead (which the show surprisingly still is, which is rare for anything that starts to get into its tenth year of existence):

“There’s a certain point where you wear out your welcome and we don’t want to do that … We want to leave them wanting more. We spend a lot of time trying to find new lines to cross. We’re not trying to offend people or gross them out, but we’re looking to surprise them. I think we’re proud of what we’ve done so far, so it’s time to stop.”

Considering that you could buy a TV for the price that Howerton and Rob McElhenney made the pilot episode of this show for, it’s pretty easy to say that they have exceeded all expectations. Plus, it seems like the right time to stop given that Charlie Day’s actually getting himself some sort of genuine movie career going, in between his parts in “Horrible Bosses,” “Monsters University,” and most recently “Pacific Rim.” We didn’t ever imagine seeing Charlie in a monster movie, but somehow it totally works.

The new season of the show premieres on its new network literally just two days after FXX is launched on Wednesday, September 4 at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time. We don’t know how the ratings are going to be, mostly because we don’t have any idea how many viewers are actually going to watch this network, but, you can watch a new preview for it here!

Photo: FXX