‘The Wonder Years’ First Look: Lee Daniels Reveals the Revival Cast
Practically everything in pop culture these days is nostalgic for something: Old superhero comics, Japanese monster movies, violent arcade games, something. We’re so nostalgic for the past, that now we’re starting to get stuff that is nostalgic for nostalgia.
The original The Wonder Years was one of the urtexts of the nostalgia boom. It was produced in the late ’80s and early ’90s but set 20 years earlier, and chronicled the life of a young teenager growing up in the turbulent but magical times of the late ’60s. The series, which starred Fred Savage as Kevin Arnold, only ran for six seasons but it made an enormous impact, raising a generation of kids to be wistful about the past — even when that past took place decades before they were born.
With nostalgia so much more popular now than it was in the late ’80s, it only makes sense to do a new Wonder Years, one that could not only be nostalgic for the 1960s but for the 1980s as well. This new Wonder Years is set in roughly the same time period as the original but will chronicle the lives of an African American family living in Alabama. The Kevin Arnold of the show is a boy named Dean, played by Elisha “EJ” Williams. Just as the original show had the adult Kevin narrating the show’s events from the present (voiced in that case by Daniel Stern), this one will have Don Cheadle providing the grown-up Dean’s thoughts on the events transpiring in his own childhood. (Original star Fred Savage directed the new series’ pilot.)
Production on the show is now underway, and producer Lee Daniels provided the first look at the new Wonder Years cast.
The new Wonder Years revival will air on ABC, likely in the fall.
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