Netflix typically doesn’t screw around with ordering pilots. Rather than fussing around with trial balloons, the streamer generally just commits to a first season of a show, a practice it’s followed so religiously that it’s had weird knock-on effects for the whole TV industry, taking pilot season from a feverish free-for-all to a much quieter affair, one where only a few handfuls of TV pilots get made, total, every year. So it’s interesting to note that the streamer has just issued exactly one such pilot order for the long-gestating sequel series to classic Cosby Show spin-off A Different World, suggesting that execs at the company would really like to see how this kind of reboot will work before they commit to shelling out for a whole season.
The sequel show is being developed, and will be showrun, by Felicia Pride, previously of Grey’s Anatomy and Queen Sugar. The series will reportedly take one of the Standard Accepted TV Reboot narratives, i.e., following the kids of the show’s original cast as they make their own debuts at Hillman College. The pilot will reportedly be directed by Debbie Allen, who was brought in to oversee the series from its second season onward, and who directed almost all of the original 144 episodes of the original series; she’ll also executive produce alongside Mandy Summers, Tom Werner, Gina Prince-Bythewood, and Reggie Bythewood. So far, no cast members have apparently been locked in for the pilot, while Netflix is reportedly hoping to see how the ensemble gels before it makes any big commitments to a full series.
The original A Different World ran for six seasons on NBC, airing from 1987 to 1993. (It ended up outliving The Cosby Show by just a year.) The show initially starred Cosby‘s Lisa Bonet, but when she got pregnant—and Bill Cosby objected to depicting Denise Huxtable as a young unwed mother on the series—she was removed from the show. (As was Marisa Tomei, over concerns that having a white leading character detracted from the show’s attempts to depict life at a historically black college.) From the second season on, the series focused on an ensemble centered on Jasmine Guy and Kadeem Hardison, with other cast members over the years including Dawnn Lewis, Sinbad, and Jada Pinkett Smith. There’s no word on who, if anyone, from the previous series will appear in the planned reboot, although it seems natural to assume that Guy and Hardison will at least show up for cameos, given that original descriptions for the show suggested it would center on the daughter of the pair’s characters, Whitley and Dwayne.
[via Variety]
