According to Buzzfeed, the wildly popular teen show Zoey 101 may be coming back for a reboot. The series aired on Nickelodeon in 2005 before it ended in 2008.
Jamie Lynn Spears (All That) starred in Zoey 101 as Zoey Brooks, a teen adjusting to life in her new Malibu boarding school while making friends along the way. The show features Victoria Justice (Victorious), Matthew Underwood (The Super School), Alexa Nicolas (Detention of the Dead), Sean Flynn (Wuthering High), and Erin Sanders (Big Time Rush) as Zoey’s large friend group. Despite being wildly successful among teens at the time, Zoey 101 was cut short after just four seasons in 2008, due to Spears announcing her pregnancy and giving birth to her daughter at age 16. At the time, Spears was subject to a great amount of public scrutiny. In an attempt to escape the public eye, she moved back to her hometown in Louisiana which left her no choice but to set aside her acting career. However, Spears recently made her return to acting in new Netflix original series, Sweet Magnolias, her first role in over 10 years.
In an interview with Hollywood Reporter about Sweet Magnolias, Spears discusses the possibility of Zoey 101 reboot and hopes that it would connect with the same fans that watched the series when it initially aired, who are now in their 20s. She states, “We couldn’t do it justice by putting it back on Nickelodeon because our fanbase has grown into young adults like me, 29 or around the same age. We want to tell stories about where the characters are now. We want to connect with the fans and touch on topics that are impacting millennials, so it would have to be aged up and be more mature.” Spears’ concerns can be compared to that of Hillary Duff’s (A Cinderella Story) when she hoped for a Lizzy McGuire reboot on Disney+. The reboot halted production when Terri Minsky (Andi Mack), the creator of the show, and Duff felt that they didn’t agree with the streaming site’s decision to limit the reboot under a “PG rating,” via Buzzfeed. Duff felt that her fans should be able to connect with an adult’s experiences just as they were able to connect to pre-teen’s experiences, which she would be unable to do under Disney’s restrictions to keep it kid-friendly. Comparing her situation to Duff’s, Spears says, “I couldn’t play Zoey today without some type of connection to who I am now. She grew up, and so did I. You need that freedom to explore where the character would be,” via Hollywood Reporter.
According to Hollywood Reporter, The Zoey 101 cast discussed the possibility of reboot at their mini-reunion last year with the cast of All That. Spears believes that her now-adult character would be “in charge of something. She’s a boss of some type.” Meanwhile, her complicated love story with her teenage love interest, Chase, played by Flynn, would still stand. Cast members such as Sanders, who played Quinn Pensky and Underwood, who played Logan Reese, have also discussed their potential storylines and felt that “Quinn would be running to be the first woman president and Logan would probably be bankrolling her with Daddy’s money,” via Hollywood Reporter.
The cast’s reunion is how talks began about a potential series reboot. Spears says that her discussions with Nickelodeon about the reboot still remain in the “baby stages” and mostly consist of where it would be filmed and take place. Once quarantine is lifted, further discussions about how to take the reboot one step further will take place, however currently, nothing is set in stone.