Bad news for soap fans who enjoyed the recent Corriedale crossover as Coronation Street and Emmerdale boss Iain MacLeod has ruled out the possibility of another special episode where the two worlds collide.
Earlier this year, the two ITV soaps crossed paths in a record-smashing episode that saw a peak of 4.7 million viewers tune in.
The crossover revolved around Debbie Webster and Ronnie Bailey’s wedding, with the big day turning into an horrific night when multiple cars were involved in a pile-up that claimed the life of Billy Mayhew.
Speaking on whether the success of Corriedale could be replicated in a more permanent crossover, MacLeod seemed pretty convinced a merger “wouldn’t make sense”.
“The two shows do have a very different editorial voice and different sensibilities and the type of stories they tell are different,” he said on the This Is Media City podcast, addressing fans’ hopes for another crossover.
ITV
“We had to tiptoe quite carefully through the minefield of blending it together and making sure it didn’t feel like some horrible Frankenstein’s monster of two desperate halves.”
“It just wouldn’t work to do it long-term,” he continued, insisting on the differences between the “gothic and crazy” Emmerdale and the “more grounded” Corrie.
“And also, if you’ve got two incredibly successful brands, why would you blend them together? I don’t know that it would end up being more than the sum of its parts if you did it long-term,” he said.
“It doesn’t make any sense from my point of view to do it more permanently.”
ITV
Related: Best streaming services
MacLeod also shut down the possibility of a “Corriedale 2”, explaining that it wouldn’t generate “the same level of excitement” given it’d been done before.
“That would immediately lower people’s engagement levels before they’d watched it. And secondly, it would inevitably be compared to the first time and people would find fault with it in some way,” he said.
“I just tend to think, something one and done is great.”
MacLeod previously revealed the two ITV soaps are in for a massive production overhaul, aimed to improve the visual quality of both series “without homogenising it too much”.
The producer confirmed Corrie and Emmerdale would be updating their cameras and post-production infrastructure to compete with streaming services like Netflix.
“What we don’t want is to be left behind. If your mum’s now watching Squid Game on Netflix, you don’t want those viewers to turn on Corrie or turn on Emmerdale and it looks like a completely different century – or genre, even,” he said.
“We want to evolve our look so it retains some of the cinematic flavours that we saw in Corriedale recently.”
Coronation Street airs on weeknights at 8.30pm on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.
Read more Coronation Street spoilers on our dedicated homepage
Emmerdale airs on weeknights at 8pm on ITV1, and streams on ITVX.
Read more Emmerdale spoilers on our dedicated homepage
For exclusive soap star interviews, gossip, spoilers and theories every week, don’t miss the Soap Scoop podcast from Inside Soap magazine. The latest episode delves into next week’s soap spoilers for EastEnders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale – featuring an unexpected pregnancy, dark new alliances, and secretive newcomers causing chaos on the cobbles.