“Desperate Housewives ”Creator Marc Cherry Has an Idea for a Reboot, but It's Not What You'd Expect (Exclusive)

The director/producer wants to tell another story about a beloved 'character' from the show

Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry estimates he's had "about 70,000 people" ask him about a reboot of the series.

"The truth of the matter is that I have a couple of ideas to do it," he tells PEOPLE. But with the original cast? Probably not.

Since the beloved series about the women of Wisteria Lane went off the air in May of 2012, Cherry, now 62, has remained close to many of his colleagues.

"I ran into a lot of people including Marcia [Cross] when Eva Longoria got her star on the Walk of Fame," he shares. "I had Felicity [Huffman] over a few months ago. Brenda Strong and I are making plans together. And Doug Savant's brother actually lives on my street, so I'll bump into Doug occasionally too. I loved my cast and I treasure those people — every time I run into one of them, we pick up as if no time has passed at all."

Plus, "I'm grateful to them," he adds. "You can write a really great script, but unless you get the right actors to say the words correctly, it doesn't make much of a difference. I've had a couple of pilots where I don't think I got the right cast, but in that one, the casting gods were with me. I lucked out."

Cherry says he didn't have certain actors in mind for the roles he created back in the early 2000s; rather, "it was just like a prototype in my head," he shares. "And looking back, I never really anticipated having such an attractive cast. The prettiest actresses kept getting the part."

"And this sounds so stupid in retrospect," he adds, "but I was worried critics would make fun of me for putting together the most attractive cul-de-sac in the history of television."

The ABC series, which began in 2004, also starred Teri Hatcher, James Denton, Ricardo Antonio Chavira, Nicollette Sheridan and Jesse Metcalfe, among others who continued to join in later seasons. In its time, it won seven Primetime Emmys and three Golden Globe Awards.

Related: Meet the Real-Life Families of the Desperate Housewives Cast as the Series Turns 20

Looking back on the early days, "that first season especially, it all kind of worked out," Cherry remembers. "And I'm very proud of it. It's funny — I have a very clear memory of season 1 but we did 180 episodes, and after that my mind is mush. But that first season, because it was my first time running an hour-long show, that burns very brightly in my memory. And they're very happy memories indeed."

Tipping his hat to his writers, Cherry recalls how he had to "demonstrate to the network before they picked the series up how I could combine an ongoing dramatic storyline with suspense and comedy. That was the biggest trick of the show, doing three genres at the same time."

With new fans picking it up now that it's streaming on Hulu, "it's a lovely reward," Cherry says. "We all worked very hard on that show. And it's lovely to know that our work will last after we're long gone."

So as for that reboot?

"I would probably want to do the idea maybe in an earlier decade," Cherry explains. "Because the character I miss writing the most is actually Wisteria Lane. That was the most fun playground anyone in the history of television has ever had, because we owned the whole street. I know that street like the back of my hand. When someone shoots a commercial on that street, I know it instantly, because I know all those houses, I know the geography. It was such a fun place to write for. And there's times when I go, 'You know what? I wonder if I could write Wisteria Lane in like, 1966.' "

Related: 'Desperate Housewives' Cast: Where Are They Now?

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Cherry says there is a "part of me" that would "love to go back and do it again," thanks to the wisdom that's come with time.

"I started to go back and go, 'Okay, this was why that worked, or this is my approach to this,' " he says. "I did some things right the first season that were intuitive, more than intellectual. And I feel like if I ever got a chance to do that show again, I'd be better at the job. I learned so much."

The trick, however, is figuring out if "there is still stuff that needs to be said," Cherry explains. "If you do a reboot, you have to have a really good artistic reason to do it. And at some point, I'll sit down with someone and go, 'Okay, let's talk about if there's a good enough "why" to do it.' "

Creating Desperate Housewives "was like, you've taken a couple of swimming lessons and then they just throw you into the biggest pool ever and say, 'Go swim,' " Cherry says. "But that's probably a metaphor for life: Oh, I made so many mistakes, but I did some things right. And I just learned. God, I learned."

Desperate Housewives is now streaming in its entirety on Hulu.