Some of you may have seen headlines about Will Smith rebooting ‘The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air’, and just thought “Dammed Hollywood! Another day, another reboot!” However, this one is so much more and could be something really special…
Now, this is a story all about how… (sorry, had to get some lyrics in somewhere!)… YouTube filmmaker Morgan Cooper inspired original star and exec producer Will Smith to pitch a dramatic remake of the sitcom that made him famous to streaming services. Cooper created and filmed the short movie/trailer ‘Bel-Air’, which you can watch above, that takes all the ideas from the sitcom but remixes them into a much darker, straight drama.
As with the original, the story follows a kid from Philly, who was “shootin’ some b-ball outside of the school, when a couple of guys who were up to no good, started makin’ trouble in the neighbourhood…” (sorry, I’ll stop, it was just so catchy!) When Will gets arrested, his mother calls his Uncle Phil to get him out of jail and insists he move to Bel-Air for a better, and safer, life with his uncle. All the elements are there, but told with a dramatic tone, and as you can see in the short trailer above, seems to work incredibly well! The series aims to take a dive deeper into the inherent conflicts, emotions and biases of what it means to be a Black man in America today, while still delivering the swagger and fun nods to the original show… But yes, they did even manage to get in a tiny bit of the “Carlton Dance”!
The new drama series has apparently been in development pretty much since Cooper original put the trailer online in March 2019. Will Smith saw the video and loved the idea so much, he contacted Cooper about developing it into a full series via Westbrook Studios, the production company he owns with wife Jada Pinkett Smith.
“As funny as the episodes are, there was a whole other layer that you couldn’t do,” commented Smith about the original series. “In a one hour drama, you can do eight-episode arcs… The dramatic version of these ideas means that you can use existing storylines, but it’s not going to seem like you’re redoing an episode, because the storyline is going to be brand new from the dramatic perspective.”
“We get to go back to the beginning and start talking about my real experiences,” Smith continues. “For example, for me, I moved to LA and started ‘The Fresh Prince’ and all of my friends started getting killed and going to jail. The escape that I made from it in real life, was the escape that Will made in the show. Was I going to be that same statistic, or was I going to do and be something different?”
The potential new series would be directed, co-exec produced, and co-written by Cooper alongside Chris Collins, who previous credits include ‘The Wire’, ‘Sons of Anarchy’, and ‘The Sopranos’. Collins would serve as showrunner and also exec-produce. Westbrook Studios and Universal Television (who own the copyright to the original series) would produce the drama.
As of right now, ‘Bel-Air’ is being pitched to various streaming services and has garnered quite a lot of interest. Whilst Peacock would seem like an obvious choice, given Universal TV’s involvement, HBO Max currently has the streaming rights to the original sitcom, so they may be interested in adding this to the mix. Netflix, Amazon and Apple have also expressed interest, so we’ll have to wait and see if it lands anywhere.
