Degrassi is officially coming back.
A reboot of the beloved Canadian teen drama series has been greenlit by Warner Media for its HBO Max streaming service.
The currently untitled Degrassi series will shoot in Toronto this summer ahead of a planned 2023 premiere. Canadian production company WildBrain, which owns the Degrassi property, is producing the new series. Lara Azzopardi (Mary Kills People) and Julia Cohen (Riverdale) will serve as showrunners.
Plot and casting details have yet to be confirmed, although Warner Media notes that the reboot will run for 10 one-hour episodes and offer a darker spin on the classic Toronto-set high school saga.
However, the biggest question mark surrounds where the series will actually stream in Canada.
“We don’t have news to share at this time, but we look forward to making additional announcements down the road about availability of the new series in Canada and other territories,” WildBrain spokesperson Shaun Smith told The Canadian Press.
It’s a testament to how frustratingly messy the Canadian streaming scape is that Canadians have to play the guessing game even with a wholly Canadian property like Degrassi, which has been around for over 40 years.
It should be noted that, as is usually the case with Canadian streaming rights, there are multiple feasible platforms that the new Degrassi show could land on. As The Globe and Mail‘s film critic Barry Hertz noted on Twitter, Crave would perhaps be the most logical assumption, given how a lot of other HBO Max content arrives there.
That said, David Friend, The Canadian Press entertainment reporter who got the original statement from WildBrain, said it’s “quite likely” the Degrassi series won’t hit Crave. That’s because it’s a Warner Media Kids production, the programming of which has traditionally landed elsewhere, like traditional TV networks. For example, WildBrain owns The Family Channel, so that’s a possible Canadian destination.
All four seasons of the most recent Degrassi series, 2016’s Next Class, are streaming on Netflix Canada.
Source: WildBrain
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