The Real World is coming back—and it’s going back to its roots. The landmark MTV reality show is getting a reboot alongside other MTV classics like Daria and Made through the production company MTV Studios, but there’s a twist: The reboots will be for streaming sites only, according to Deadline .
The Real World made its debut in 1992 and aired for 32 seasons, ending early last year with a Seattle-set season subtitled Bad Blood . The first few seasons of the groundbreaking reality show featured interaction and debate on social issues among the “seven strangers picked to live in a house.”
Racism was hotly debated during the first season of The Real World , which was set in New York, and a castmember’s abortion was documented in Season 2. By the third season of the show, President Bill Clinton pointed out that everyone in America knew someone with AIDS after The Real World: San Francisco’s Pedro Zamora shared his story. But later seasons of The Real World focused more on partying and hookups among the housemates.
A press release posted by PR Newswire revealed that the upcoming Real World reboot will exist only on streaming platforms with a promise that “the show that invented modern reality television” will return to its roots. In order to “reconnect” with the trailblazing series’ past, the new show will strip away “the polarization and cold anonymity of social media, the din of the 24-hour news cycle, and the facades of the instafamous culture to find out what happens ‘when seven strangers are picked to live in a house…stop being polite and start getting real.’”
The cast of ‘The Real World: Austin’ just had the ’00s reunion of your dreams. https://t.co/nnltg2Zn9k @WestonBergmann @MTV pic.twitter.com/U88qTvy1tm
— Brit + Co (@BritandCo) June 2, 2018
MTV president Chris McCarthy told Deadline that today’s younger generation didn’t experience cable TV in the same way their parents did, so the new Real World will be an eye-opener.
“We’re able to go and actually retell that story, updated of course, with new characters, new tensions, new real-life issues, but still stay totally pure to the clean idea of what Real World was without having to bastardize it in order to make it work for traditional cable,” McCarthy said.
MTV has had some success in the reboot game with recent revivals of Jersey Shore, TRL, and more, but the streaming-only reboot of The Real World could prove to be the network’s biggest challenge yet.
Take a look at the video below to see the opening to the original, 1992 Real World season that paved the way for today’s reality TV landscape.