Saved By the Bell Revival: Oscar Winner Matthew Cherry to Direct an Episode

The Saved by the Bell revival recently began filming, taking the world of Bayside High into a whole new era. The series, which will premiere as part of NBCUniversal‘s Peacock streaming service, will feature a rogue’s gallery of new and returning faces — including one major one behind the scenes. Matthew A. Cherry, who recently won an Oscar for his animated short film Hair Love, took to Instagram to reveal that he is directing an episode of the revival.

Cherry, who previously played for the NFL, has been in the world of film since 2007. His filmography as a director includes The Last Fall and 9 Rides, as well as episodes of Black-ish, The Unicorn, and Mixed-ish.

The Saved by the Bell revival will see Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) now acting as the Governor of California. After getting into hot water for closing too many low-income schools, Morris introduces a proposal that sends the students from those closed schools to the highest-performing institutions in the state, including Bayside High. These new students will give the privileged kids at Bayside a little bit of the reality that they’ve been missing.

Gosselaar, Mario Lopez, and Elizabeth Berkeley will be joined by John Michael Higgins as Bayside’s Principal Toddman, and Josie Totah, Haskiri Velazquez, Mitchell Hoog, Alycia Pascual-Pena, and Belmont Cameli as a new generation of kids. Great News creator Tracey Wigfield will serve as showrunner and executive producer of the Saved by the Bell reboot, following her new overall deal with NBCUniversal. She will be joined by original series creator Peter Engel and Franco Bario (Great News). Lopez and Berkley are also set to produce.

“I’m okay, I mean me personally, with never seeing a reboot ever again,” Gosselaar previously told THR‘s Award Chatter podcast. “I like original content. I really appreciate what Cobra Kai has done. I appreciate what Roseanne has done… what Fuller House has done, it’s great. 90210 now is, I heard, for Fox. But I’m okay with never seeing a reboot ever again… If it was a good product that I felt wouldn’t tarnish the original product, then yeah. I’m open to hearing anything.”

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