‘Glee’ Stars Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, and Cory Monteith Not Returning For 4th Season

The Hollywood Reporter revealed on Wednesday that ‘Glee’ stars Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, and Chris Colfer will not be returning to the hit Fox show after the 3^rd season finale. The series co-creator Ryan Murphy said that the three stars will be among the characters who graduate at the end of the 3^rd season, in an effort to keep the show’s timeline realistic.

Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter: “You can keep them on the show for six years and people will criticize you for not being realistic, or you can be really true to life and say when they started the show they were very clearly sophomores and they should graduate at the end of their senior year.”

As fans of the show exploded on Twitter, Michele reassured her fans, tweeting “We always knew we’d graduate in real time…Its all part of the plan and it’s all good! Its going to make Season 3 amazing!”

The stars don’t have too much to worry about, with Michele starring in the upcoming films New Year’s Eve and Dorothy of Oz and Cory Monteith starring in January’s Sisters & Brothers.

Colfer is also writing and starring in next year’s Struck by Lightning, has sold a pilot to Disney Channel titled ‘The Little Leftover Witch’, and has a book deal with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. His first novel, The Land of Stories, is due to be released in summer 2012.

The stars are also preparing for Glee: The 3D Concert Movie that opens on August 12^th.

But it doesn’t seem that Michele, Colfer, and Monteith will be alone in saying goodbye to ‘Glee’ at the end of the upcoming season, with Murphy saying: “more characters are leaving than are staying.”

Season 3 of Glee will premiere on September 20, 2011 on FOX.

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