Will Smith Announces Fresh Prince of Bel-Air-Inspired Drama Coming to Peacock

Now this is a story all about how the dramatic reimagining of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air landed at Peacock.

On Tuesday, Sept. 8, Will Smith took to his YouTube page and revealed that Peacock has ordered two seasons of BEL-Air. As E! readers may recall, in August 2020, Smith’s Westbrook Studios and Universal TV confirmed they were creating a series inspired by cinematographer Morgan Cooper‘s 2019 viral trailer, which reimagined the show as a drama.

“We have just officially closed the deal with Peacock with an unprecedented two-season-order from a pitch,” Smith shared with Cooper and BEL-AIR showrunner Chris Collins. “I’ve been in this business for 30 years and that does not happen. They ordered two full seasons of BEL-AIR based on the quality of the pitch and the work that you guys have done. So, I want to say congratulations. I am hyped.”

Cooper, who will direct, co-write and co-executive produce the drama, revealed that he plans to “peel back the layers of these iconic characters and explore this world in a really unforgettable way.”

He continued, “You know, it’s a show that’s really gonna surprise people in the best way possible.”

BEL-AIR will be a one-hour drama set in modern-day America. While the Will character will still be “West Philadelphia born and raised,” his journey to Bel-Air may be darker than addressed in the beloved ’90s NBC sitcom.

“It’s an idea that came straight from the heart,” Cooper noted. “The vision came to me, I knew it was something I had to create no matter what…To be walking in this journey together with you and Chris is, not only a dream come true but, something that I really honestly feel was destined.”

By transforming the show from a 30-minute sitcom to an hour-long drama, BEL-AIR can dive deeper into timely themes and important character arcs.

Adapted from the first book in celebrated British author Malorie Blackman‘s award-winning YA series, Noughts + Crosses imagines an alternate universe in which history happened in racial reverse. In this world, Africa—or “Aprica”—invaded Europe centuries ago, enslaving its people. In present-day London, “Albion,” slavery is an institution of the past, but Jim Crow-esque segregation laws maintain the power dynamic: a ruling class of Black “Crosses” control the country’s politics, wealth and culture over an oppressed, impoverished underclass of white “Noughts” who are at the brink of revolt. Against this backdrop, a forbidden love story unfolds. 

From writer, executive producer and director Emilio Estevez, The Public will stream exclusively on Peacock. In The Public, an act of civil disobedience turns into a standoff with police when homeless people in Cincinnati take over the public library to seek shelter from the bitter cold.

The Public stars Alec Baldwin, Emilio Estevez, Jena Malone, Taylor Schilling, Christian Slater, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, Gabrielle Union, Jacob Vargas, Michael K. Williams, and Jeffrey Wright. It’s produced by Hammerstone Studios, Living the Dream Films and E2 Films. Emilio Estevez serves as writer, executive producer and director. Lisa Niedenthal, Alex Lebovici and Steve Ponce produce.

A Most Beautiful Thing, a documentary film that chronicles the first African American high school rowing team in the nation made up of young men from the West Side of Chicago, will launch exclusively on Peacock.

Based on Arshay Cooper‘s memoir of the same name, the powerful documentary is narrated by Academy and Grammy Award winner Common. NBA stars Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade executive produce along with Grammy Award winner and producer 9th Wonder. The film is directed by award-winning filmmaker and Olympic rower Mary Mazzio.

Executive produced by activist and two-time Super Bowl champion Malcolm Jenkins and written and directed by Sonia Lowman, Black Boys is a documentary film that celebrates the full humanity of Black men and boys in America. Utilizing conversations and stories around education, criminal justice and sports, the film reveals the emotional landscape of those experiencing racism and invites us to reimagine an America in which Black boys experience true belonging and unlimited possibilities.

Black Boys features interviews with activist and rapper Vic Mensa, NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony, two-time Super Bowl champion Greg Scruggs, NFL Hall of Fame inductee Cris Carter, Super Bowl champion Chris Long, award-winning sports journalist Jemele Hill, poet/activist Malcolm London, and former U.S. Secretary of Education, Dr. John King Jr. 

The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show follows the history-making week in February 1968 when an African American got the opportunity to host the whole week of the popular show for the first time ever. Amidst a backdrop of riots across the country and the Vietnam War, civil rights activist Harry Belafonte introduced a fractured, changing country to itself for five nights with guests that included entertainment icons Aretha Franklin and Sidney Poitier as well as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

Belafonte appears in the film, along with Questlove and Whoopi Goldberg who recount the historic moment.

The Sit In is a production of Big Beach and is directed by Yoruba Richen and executive produced by Joy Reid. Valerie Thomas and Joan Walsh serve as producers. Leah Holzer and Peter Saraf also executive produce.

In 2005, 18-year-old Black student Anthony Walker was murdered in an unprovoked, racially motivated attack in Liverpool that shocked the nation. Anthony is a powerful feature film that examines the impact of Walker’s murder by exploring what may have happened had he lived.

This distinctive drama presents a unique perspective on this devastating crime and the life it took away. Written by BAFTA-winning screenwriter Jimmy McGovern, Anthony’s imagined life is told through reverse chronology as we see him realize his dreams and enjoy the life he had a right to live, before fate—and hate—took it all away.

Anthony stars Toheeb Jimon (The Feed) as Anthony Walker, Rakie Ayola (Been So Long) as his mother Gee Walker, Julia Brown (World on Fire) as his wife Katherine and Bobby Schofield (Knightfall) as his friend Mick.

The classic series is being reimagined for Peacock! Original series stars Elizabeth Berkley and Mario Lopez are back in the main cast, along with Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Tiffani Thiessen and a whole new student body, led by Daisy (Haskiri Velazquez), Aisha (Alycia Pascual-Pena), Lexi (Josie Totah), Devante (Dexter Darden), and two serious troublemakers: Mac (Mitchell Hoog), the son of Zack and Kelly, and Jamie (Belmont Cameli), the son of Jessie Spano. 

Based on the bestselling novel of the same title by Karen M. McManus, One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five high schoolers walk into detention and only four make it out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide. One of Us Is Lying features an ensemble cast starring Marianly Tejada (The Purge), Cooper van Grootel (Go!), Annalisa Cochrane (Into the Dark: Pure), Chibuikem Uche (Ghost Draft), Barrett Carnahan (Grown-ish), Jessica McLeod (You Me Her) and Melissa Collazo (Swamp Thing).

Grammy Award-winning recording artist, Emmy nominee and Broadway star Sara Bareilles is set to lead the Tina Fey and Robert Carlock produced series Girls5eva. “When a one-hit-wonder girl group from the ’90s gets sampled by a young rapper, its members reunite to give their pop star dreams one more shot. They may be grown women balancing spouses, kids, jobs, debt, aging parents and shoulder pain, but can’t they also be Girls5eva?”

Bareilles will star as Dawn, former member of the short-lived ’90s girl group Girls5eva, who is now a bit restless in life managing her family’s small Italian restaurant in Queens. When the opportunity arises, Dawn reluctantly gets the band back together for a Girls5eva reunion and it might just be exactly what she needed.

Premiering September

Each week Amber Ruffin (writer and performer from NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers) will showcase Amber’s signature smart and silly take on the week’s news. No matter what’s happening in the world, Amber will respond to it with a charming mix of seriousness, nonsense, and evening gowns. The Amber Ruffin Show is a topical late-night show with just the good parts—the comedy.

Coming 2021

Will Forte will reprise his iconic Saturday Night Live role as MacGuber and also write and executive produce the new 8-episode comedy series. “After rotting in prison for over a decade, America’s ultimate hero and uber patriot MacGruber is finally released. His mission: to take down a mysterious villain from his past—Brigadier Commander Enos Queeth. With the entire world in the crosshairs, MacGruber must race against time to defeat the forces of evil—only to find that evil…may be lurking within.”

Premiering September 2020

Emmy Award-winning producer, actor and comedian Larry Wilmore is bringing his distinct voice to streaming with a new weekly special series. Larry will have real discussions with high profile people from all different backgrounds including sports, politics and entertainment. Each episode will not only cover the election but will also engage in the important conversations of the week. It will be funny, sometimes serious, potentially awkward and most definitely honest.

The upcoming comedy Rutherford Falls from co-creators and executive producers Michael Schur, Ed Helms and Sierra Teller Ornelas has set its initial cast with Jana Schmieding, Michael Greyeyes, Jesse Leigh and Dustin Milligan. “A small town in upstate New York and the Native American reservation it borders, are turned upside down when local legend and town namesake, Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms) fights the moving of a historical statue.”

Five singles meet at, of all places, the singles’ table at a wedding. After several bottles of champagne, they decide to pitch in and buy a house together. Five singles buy a house together—what could go right?  It’s a grand social experiment with one glaring problem: they’ll have to actually live with each other.  All while journeying together through disasters, life-turning crises, and  moments of love, joy and heartbreak. The series stars Kat Stewart (Offspring), Stephen Peacocke (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot), Doris Younane (Frayed), Katie Robertson (Rosehaven), Roy Joseph (Halim), Kate Jenkinson (Wentworth) and Hugh Sheridan (Packed to the Rafters). Five Bedrooms is produced by Hoodlum Entertainment with assistance from Film Victoria. It is co-funded by Sky Studios, Network Ten and Screen Australia. 

Premiering September 3, 2020

When disgraced Harvard philosophy scholar Jack Griffin (Glenn Howerton, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) loses out on his dream job, he is forced to return to Toledo, Ohio, and work as a high school Advanced Placement biology teacher. As he comes crashing into Whitlock High School, Jack makes it absolutely clear that he will not be teaching any biology. Realizing he has a room full of honor roll students at his disposal, Jack decides instead to use the kids’ brainpower for his own benefit. But are his students instead helping him to realize his dream job might actually be the one he has right now? Eager to prove that he is still king of the castle, Principal Durbin (Patton Oswalt, Veep) struggles to control the force of nature that is Jack Griffin. The series also stars Mary Sohn (Work in Progress), Lyric Lewis (Baskets), Jean Villepique (Sharp Objects) and Paula Pell (Saturday Night Live). A.P. Bio is produced by Broadway Video, Sethmaker Shoemeyers Productions and Universal Television.

Premiering September 17, 2020

Passenger plane Flight 716 shockingly vanishes, and brilliant investigator Kendra Malley (Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife), alongside her mentor Howard Lawson (Christopher Plummer, Knives Out) are brought on to lead the investigation. When battling forces threaten to undermine their work, Kendra must find the truth and stop it from happening again. The series also stars Kris Holden-Reid (Umbrella Academy), Rebecca Liddiard (Run This Town), Tamara Duarte (Longmire), Mark Rendall (Versailles), Peter Mensah (Midnight, Texas) and Sasha Roiz (Suits). Departure is produced in association with Starlings Television and Corus Entertainment, produced by Shaftesbury (Canada) and Greenpoint Productions Ltd. (UK).

Best friends Jamie (Mel Giedroyc) and Fran (Sue Perkins) are trying to make their way in the world with only each other to rely on. They also just happen to kill people for a living. Fueled by their antics and frivolous bickering, each job inevitably gets derailed, leading them into bizarre misadventures, full of oddball characters and unexpected dilemmas. Hitmen is produced by Tiger Aspect in association with Sky Studios and is distributed by NBCUniversal Global Distribution. 

Based on Aldous Huxley‘s groundbreaking novel, Brave New World imagines a utopian society that has achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family, and history itself. As citizens of New London, Bernard Marx (Harry Lloyd, Game of Thrones, The Theory of Everything) and Lenina Crowne (Jessica Brown Findlay, Winter’s Tale, Downton Abbey) embark on a vacation to the Savage Lands, where they become embroiled in a harrowing and violent rebellion. Bernard and Lenina are rescued by John the Savage (Alden Ehrenreich, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Hail, Caesar!), who escapes with them back to New London. John’s arrival in the New World soon threatens to disrupt its utopian harmony, leaving Bernard and Lenina to grapple with the repercussions.

Brave New World also stars Demi Moore, Kylie Bunbury, Hannah John-Kamen, Sen Mitsuji, Joseph Morgan and Nina Sosanya.

Santa Barbara Police Chief Carlton Lassiter (Timothy Omundson, This Is Us, American Housewife) is ambushed on the job and left for dead. In a vintage Psych-style Hitchcockian nod, he begins to see impossible happenings around his recovery clinic. Shawn (James Roday, A Million Little Things, Psych) and Gus (Dulé Hill, Suits, Psych) return to Lassie’s side in Santa Barbara and are forced to navigate the personal, the professional, and possibly the supernatural. Separated from their new lives in San Francisco, our heroes find themselves unwelcome in their old stomping grounds as they secretly untangle a twisted case without the benefit of the police, their loved ones, or the quality sourdough bakeries of the Bay Area. What they uncover will change the course of their relationships forever. Psych 2 is a full-length film.

Psych 2: Lassie Comes Home also stars Maggie Lawson, Kirsten Nelson and Corbin Bernsen.

The Capture is a conspiracy thriller that looks at a troubling world of fake news and the extraordinary capabilities of the intelligence services. When soldier Shaun Emery’s (Callum Turner, War & Peace, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) conviction for a murder in Afghanistan is overturned due to flawed video evidence, he returns to life as a free man with his young daughter. But when damning CCTV footage from a night out in London comes to light, Shaun’s life takes a shocking turn and he must soon fight for his freedom once again. Detective Inspector Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger, Strike, Patrick Melrose) is drafted to investigate Shaun’s case, but she quickly learns that the truth can sometimes be a matter of perspective. The Capture also stars Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Hand of God), Famke Janssen (X-Men, Taken), Ben Miles (The Crown, Coupling), Laura Haddock (Transformers: The Last Knight, Guardians of the Galaxy), Lia Williams (The Crown, Kiri), Sophia Brown (Clique, Marcella) and Paul Ritter (Chernobyl, Friday Night Dinner).

Intelligence is a workplace comedy set in the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters—a kind of weedier, geekier, more bureaucratic version of MI5 and MI6, where they tackle international and domestic Cyber Crime from a desktop. When a pompous maverick NSA agent Jerry Bernstein (David Schwimmer, American Crime Story, Friends, Band of Brothers) comes over from the U.S. to join the team, he enlists an inept and tactless computer analyst Joseph (Nick Mohammed, The Martian, Ted Lasso, Christopher Robin) in a power grab that threatens to disrupt the team’s ability to combat cyber terrorism.

Emmy Rossum is a blonde bombshell! In Peacock’s new series Angelyne, the actress undergoes a wild transformation to play the real-life Los Angeles icon of the same name. Angelyne herself rose to fame in the 1980s after plastering her portraits on billboards across the city and driving around in her signature pink Corvette. Watch the trailer here!

At the 2016 Rio Olympics Ryan Lochte (Celebrity Big Brother, Dancing with the Stars) was at the center of a scandal that has since overshadowed a decorated swimming career that includes 12 Olympic medals. Now a 35-year-old husband and father of two young children, Lochte is hoping for one more chance to make Team USA and prove he’s not the same man he was four years ago.

Created and hosted by Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Dale Jr. Download), this series is an exploratory look at great racing cathedrals of the past. Dale Jr. and co-host Matthew Dillner (Dale Jr. Download) tells the stories of speedways that have been forgotten, abandoned, and overtaken by nature. Racing legends join as guests throughout the series.

First introduced to the world of children’s literacy over 75 years ago, Curious George® was created by Margret and H.A. Rey in 1941 and remains one of the most beloved children’s classics of all-time. The animated series targets preschool viewers and follows the adventures of everyone’s favorite monkey and his insatiable curiosity to bring delightful antics, gentle humor and heartfelt emotion to each fun-filled episode. With a focus on education, the Emmy® award-winning program incorporates early concepts in math, science, technology and engineering and encourages children to use their imagination and expand their own investigations of the world.

The Curious George voice cast includes Emmy® award winner Frank Welker (Scooby Doo and Guess Who?), Jeff Bennett (The Loud House) and Rino Romano (Spaceballs: The Animated Series). 

Cleopatra in Space​ is a comedic adventure focusing on the untold story of Cleopatra’s teenage years. Viewers can follow Cleo (Lilimar Hernandez, Bella and the Bulldogs, Knight Squad) as she is transported 30,000 years into the future, to an Egyptian-themed planet that is ruled by talking cats and where she discovers she is the prophesied savior of the future world. In order to prepare for her role and mission, Cleo is sent to an elite academy where she has to train to take on the bad guys, figure out how to eventually get herself back home to Egypt, as well as tackling the highs and lows of being a teenager in high school.

Twelve-year-old Waldo (Joshua Rush, The Lion Guard, Andi Mack) and his best friend Wenda (Haley Tju, Bella and the Bulldogs) are members of the Worldwide Wanderer Society—the international order of curious travelers who circle the globe celebrating cultures and solving problems through observation. Their mentor—Wizard Whitebeard (Thomas Lennon, The State; Reno 911, The Odd Couple), a seasoned wanderer—sends these inquisitive young adventurers on international travel missions so they can earn their stripes and someday become wizard-level wanderers too. But standing in Waldo and Wenda’s way is their rival Odlulu (Eva Carlton, Little), who can’t help but cause trouble wherever she goes.

(E!, Peacock and Universal TV are part of the NBCUniversal family.)