Peacock debuts the official Bel-Air trailer offering the first look at Will Smith's Fresh Prince reboot for NBCUniversal's streaming platform. The original series aired from 1990 to 1996 on NBC and starred Smith as a street-smart teenager born and raised in West Philadelphia who is shipped off to the titular Los Angeles neighborhood to live with his wealthy aunt and uncle and their family after getting into trouble back home. Will must then learn to find a balance between remaining true to his roots while also adjusting to his affluent new area.
Development on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reboot began in mid-2020 after writer/director Morgan Cooper produced a mock trailer for a dramatic reimagining of the show on YouTube in 2019 to praise from Smith. The producer/star teamed up with Cooper to develop the project into a full-series reboot and began pitching it around town, with Peacock officially landing the rights and giving it a two-season order, with production getting underway in 2021. Jabbari Banks would land the coveted role of the fictionalized Will Smith for Bel-Air alongside Adrian Holmes, Cassandra Freeman, Olly Sholotan, Coco Jones, Akira Akbar and Jimmy Akingbola.
With just a month remaining until the show's premiere after the Super Bowl, Peacock has debuted the official Bel-Air trailer. The video offers the first look at Will Smith's Fresh Prince reboot, including the reveal of flashbacks to the lead character's troublesome past in Philly for the serious new take on the material. Check out the trailer below:
The official Bel-Air trailer certainly fits in line with Cooper's mock trailer the reboot is taking much inspiration from, establishing a much more serious approach to the original sitcom. The inclusion of flashbacks to Will's time in Philadelphia, namely crossing paths with a dangerous-looking foe and getting his hands on a gun and using it, is certainly an interesting new development for the show and a unique angle not taken before. Generally in the original Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will's early life in Philadelphia was kept to verbal references with a couple of episodes actually seeing the young man return to his troubled home neighborhood.
It will be interesting to see how audiences react to the Bel-Air trailer and reboot given the very mixed response to Cooper's mock trailer, which many found to be too much of a deviation from the source material's fun tone towards something darker. Despite the original Fresh Prince's comedic setting, it wasn't averse to exploring heavy topics through an appropriately dramatic lens, with Will's speech regarding his absentee father still wringing tears from audiences over 20 years later while Uncle Phil's efforts to get Will and Carlton released from jail on a racially charged arrest rings devastatingly relevant to this day. Only time will tell how Bel-Air fares in comparison to its predecessor when it premieres on Peacock on February 13.
Source: Peacock