In the twilight of two extraordinary careers, there are stories that almost happened—projects whispered about in greenrooms, dreamed up during quiet dinners, or mulled over during the long pauses between work. One of those stories belonged to two legends: Dick Van Dyke and Ed Asner.
They had spoken quietly, away from cameras and headlines, about remaking The Odd Couple. It would have been more than just a television revival. It would have been a reunion of two towering talents, both masters of timing and character, both carrying decades of craft in their bones. But time, with its unyielding hand, interrupted the plan.
Ed Asner passed away in 2021, leaving Dick Van Dyke not just mourning a friend, but reflecting on the dream that never made it to the stage. With a soft voice and a faraway look, Van Dyke recently summed it up in just six words:
“It would’ve been such fun.”
A Reunion That Almost Was
The idea was simple but golden. The Odd Couple, originally brought to life by Neil Simon, has been interpreted countless times. From the 1968 film with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau to the iconic 1970s television show starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, the premise is timeless: two mismatched men trying to share a space, colliding in their differences and yet, somehow, finding a rhythm together.
For Van Dyke and Asner, the project wasn’t about chasing relevance. It was about play. Imagine Van Dyke—the spry, rubber-limbed clown who could make a stumble into poetry—squaring off against Asner, the gruff baritone, the man who could deliver a glare sharp enough to silence a room. The chemistry would have been effortless.
Those close to both men say the talks were light but sincere. They weren’t planning on reinventing the wheel. They just wanted to spend time together on stage, to make audiences laugh one more time, and to prove that comedy, like friendship, doesn’t have an expiration date.
The Timing That Slipped Away
But in Hollywood, timing is everything. By the time the conversations about The Odd Couple began to take shape, both Van Dyke and Asner were in their nineties. Their health, while remarkably resilient, was fragile. Scheduling, financing, and the sheer logistics of mounting such a production proved daunting.
Then, in August 2021, Ed Asner passed away at the age of 91. The news rippled through the entertainment world—he was remembered for his roles in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou Grant, and even Pixar’s Up. But for Van Dyke, the loss was personal. He hadn’t just lost a colleague. He had lost a friend, and with him, the possibility of their last great laugh together.
“It would’ve been such fun,” Van Dyke said, almost to himself, as though the sentence was a private letter to a man who wasn’t there to hear it.
Legends of Contrasting Styles
Part of what made the idea of Van Dyke and Asner in The Odd Couple so irresistible was the contrast. Van Dyke has always been a performer who embodied lightness—physical, musical, and comedic. From Mary Poppins to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to The Dick Van Dyke Show, his career has been a love letter to whimsy.
Asner, on the other hand, thrived in weight. His characters often carried a kind of gravitas, whether as Lou Grant barking in the newsroom or as Carl Fredricksen carrying his grief up a balloon-powered house. He could do comedy, yes, but his comedy was rooted in deadpan, in resistance, in the humor of a man who refuses to bend even as the world insists.
To see them together in a modern Odd Couple would have been like watching opposites collide in perfect sync. One light, one heavy. One fluid, one solid. A duet of difference.
The Human Side of Comedy
What’s striking about this story is not just the missed project, but what it reveals about two men at the ends of their careers. Both had achieved everything an actor could dream of—awards, acclaim, cultural immortality. Yet when they spoke about The Odd Couple, it wasn’t with the ambition of youth or the hunger for more fame.
They just wanted to have fun.
In an industry often obsessed with legacy, box office numbers, and critical reviews, their quiet plan reminds us that sometimes the greatest reward is not in the final product but in the joy of making it. For Van Dyke and Asner, the laughter they would have shared in rehearsal, the long days of improvisation, the simple act of stepping into a studio together again—that would have been enough.
And perhaps that is why Van Dyke’s words cut so deeply. It would’ve been such fun. Fun was all they wanted. Fun was the dream.
A Curtain That Never Rose
In reflecting on what never came to pass, there’s a bittersweet lesson. Even legends—men who seem larger than life, who appear to defy age and time—are not immune to the limits of mortality. We assume there will always be another season, another show, another comeback. But sometimes the curtain never rises.
And yet, in the way Van Dyke remembers it, the dream itself becomes part of the legacy. Fans now imagine what might have been, and in that imagining, the laughter exists, even if only in the collective mind.
The Power of Remembering
As audiences, we often measure greatness by what was achieved. Awards won, shows made, films completed. But there is another kind of greatness—in what was dreamed. The conversations, the what-ifs, the almosts.
Van Dyke’s wistful remembrance of Asner is not just about a canceled project. It’s about friendship, aging, and the fleeting nature of time. It’s about two men who, even in their nineties, still believed in the magic of creation. And though they never set foot on stage together in The Odd Couple, their shared vision has now become part of Hollywood lore.
A Bittersweet Legacy
Today, Dick Van Dyke is 99 years old, still moving, still singing, still astonishing fans with his resilience. His words about Asner are not just nostalgia. They are a quiet reminder to cherish the opportunities we have, because one day, even for legends, the chance may slip away.
Fans will always wonder how it might have looked—Van Dyke flailing through a messy apartment, Asner scowling in disapproval. The timing, the banter, the laughter. It would have been, as Van Dyke said, such fun.
But maybe the true beauty lies in the fact that it was imagined at all. That two men who gave the world so much laughter still dreamed of giving more. That their friendship, though now divided by death, continues to live in stories like this.
Conclusion: When Time Says No
“It would’ve been such fun…” Six words that capture joy, regret, and gratitude all at once. Six words that remind us that not every dream comes true, but even unfulfilled dreams have value. They show us what mattered to the dreamers.
For Dick Van Dyke and Ed Asner, The Odd Couple remake was not a missed opportunity for Hollywood. It was a missed opportunity for two friends to laugh together again. And maybe that’s the real story: not the show we never saw, but the friendship that made them want to try in the first place.
Sometimes, even legends run out of time before the curtain can rise. But in the memory of what could have been, the laughter still echoes.
