UPDATE
Since this story was published, Shannen Doherty joined the cast. And Luke Perry, who might have been able to join the show for a few, died after suffering a stroke.
Fox is bringing back a new version of Beverly Hills, 90210 that will feature most of the original cast members who starred in the ’90s hit.
It will simply be called 90210, the network announced Wednesday.
The six-episode show — a limited series for now — will premiere in summer 2019, and will costar Tori Spelling, Jennie Garth, Jason Priestley, Ian Ziering, Gabrielle Carteris, and Brian Austin Green. The actors will also serve as executive producers.
On the new show, the cast members will play themselves getting together to revive Beverly Hills, 90210 — with all the drama and comedy such a project would yield. The actors, after all, really did grow up together, and had real-life romantic entanglements, friendships, and feuds of their own.
"What will happen when first loves, old romances, friends and frenemies come back together, as this iconic cast — whom the whole world watched grow up together — attempts to continue from where they left off?" Fox teased in a press release.
View this video on YouTube
The cast announced the project Wednesday on their social media handles.
The show, produced by CBS Studios, was originally the idea of Spelling and Garth in late 2017, who they went to writers Mike Chessler and Chris Alberghini to develop it as a series. In addition to working on the final season in 2012–13 of the CW's 90210 revival, Chessler and Alberghini worked with Spelling on her brilliant but canceled 2006 VH1 comedy So Notorious, which was also a meta take on Spelling's actual life.
Fox's Beverly Hills, 90210 — created by Darren Star, and produced by Aaron Spelling, Tori's legendary TV producer father — premiered in 1990, ran for 10 seasons, and was of seismic importance to television. It boosted the fledgling (and then flailing) Fox, made stars of its young cast, and became the first massively successful teen soap opera. Its plots often reflected real-life adolescent struggles with drugs, sex, and working at the Beverly Hills Beach Club, even though Beverly Hills is not on the beach. As the characters aged, they started successful careers, got married, and in at least one instance were found not guilty for reasons of justifiable homicide.
This new project — which was also of interest to ABC and CBS All Access — hasn't exactly been secret. Spelling and Garth have been hinting at it since March last year; in December, TMZ caught the cast meeting together along with the writers; and after Spelling was eliminated from The Masked Singer earlier this month, she pretty much spilled the beans to Access Hollywood before any deal had actually been made.
As of yet, two of the eight original cast members have not agreed to come back for the revival, including Shannen Doherty, who during the show's original run became a tabloid star, with her every misstep as a young woman chronicled by the pre-internet celebrity press.
Doherty appeared as Brenda in early episodes of the CW's 90210 series, and told me at the time that the reassessment of her public persona felt gratifying. But in 2015, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and chronicled her treatment (and eventual remission) on social media.
Even before her illness, Doherty had learned to value a quiet life, telling me in 2008, "I don't leave my house" — and she may not want the sort of attention a new show would bring, particularly when she would be playing a heightened version of herself. (Doherty's publicist had no comment.)
The other nonreturning cast member is Luke Perry, who played Dylan McKay. He is a series regular on the CW's teen soap Riverdale, but has an open invitation to be on as many 90210 revival episodes as he can manage.