and "Inside Out 2." The Y2K-era and its immediate aftermath are firmly in the driver's seat as far as pop culture is concerned, even aughts horror staples like "Final Destination" are having a moment, that influence is only going to grow as the years continue to stretch onward. But, in the late '00s, Disney Channel had the chance to make one of their current fan-favorite franchises even bigger, and they surprisingly opted against it. "High School Musical" could have had a spinoff called "Madison High," however, the company chose not to put it into production despite casting and other reports surfacing around the show's development.

With the current love for "High School Musical," there's little doubt that something like "Madison High" would have been a nostalgic favorite by now, and possibly regarded the way things like "Camp Rock" or "Lemonade Mouth" are by late Millennials and the earliest Zoomer viewers. (If those names are leaving you scratching your head, maybe you missed the boat on the "rock star craze" that gripped a lot of family programming on these basic cable networks near the end of the 2000s.)

Still, a sense of lost opportunity lingers around the entire enterprise because of how strong nostalgia's wispy tendrils still tug at the nostrils of younger viewers now. (Have you seen all the fervor around "A Goofy Movie" lately? We're here, folks!) 2025 feels like a definitive passing of the baton moment from the oldest Millennials to their Zoomer replacements when it comes to defining these kinds of nostalgia plays. To wit, live-action versions of "How to Train Your Dragon" and a newer Disney sequel, "Zootopia 2," are heading our way. Did Disney make a mistake by not pursuing Madison High?