By Emmanuel King
The red swimsuits are officially back on the calendar. Fox announced Monday that its Baywatch reboot will premiere Wednesday, January 6, 2027 at 9 p.m., with episodes streaming on Hulu the next day. The date arrived with a new trailer, and it closes a long road back to the beach for one of the most recognizable titles in television history.
The new series is a legacy continuation, not a reset. Stephen Amell stars as Hobie Buchannon, the wild child of the original show, now grown up and serving as a Baywatch Captain in the footsteps of his legendary father, Mitch. Hobie’s world is turned upside down when Charlie Vale, the daughter he never knew he had, shows up on his doorstep eager to carry on the Buchannon family legacy and become a lifeguard herself. Jessica Belkin plays Charlie, and the father-daughter collision gives the reboot its emotional engine: a captain who has to lead the beach while figuring out how to be a father to the newest recruit on it.
Around them, Fox has built an ensemble that reads like a map of where television casting is right now. Shay Mitchell plays Trina, Hassie Harrison plays Nat, Thaddeus LaGrone plays Brad and Noah Beck plays Luke. Brooks Nader is Selene, the captain of a rival beach and Hobie’s adversary. Livvy Dunne makes her professional acting debut as Grace, a junior lifeguard. Mary McDonnell recurs as Gayle, grandmother to Hobie and Charlie.
The original series is woven through the new one. David Chokachi returns as Cody Madison, who now runs The Shoreline, the unofficially official Baywatch bar-and-grill, and still puts on the red trunks for the occasional shift. Erika Eleniak reprises Shauni McClain, Michael Bergin returns as Jack “J.D.” Darius, and Kelly Packard returns as April Giminski in guest appearances.
Behind the camera, Matt Nix (Burn Notice, The Gifted) serves as showrunner and executive producer, and McG directed the premiere. The producing team reaches back to the source: original Baywatch creators and veterans Michael Berk, Greg Bonann and Doug Schwartz are executive producers alongside Dante Di Loreto and Mike Horowitz. Fox Entertainment Studios and Fremantle co-produce.
The road here took patience. Fox handed the reboot a 12-episode straight-to-series order in September 2025 for the 2026-2027 broadcast season, held an open casting call in early 2026, and began production in Los Angeles this past spring. The premiere was originally expected in the fall before Fox moved it to January, a midseason slot the network is treating as a launchpad rather than a leftover: Fox Television Network president Michael Thorn has pointed to the January debuts of Best Medicine and Memory of a Killer, which opened to 15.4 million and 18.4 million viewers, as the model. The trailer leans into scale, opening on a plane crash on the coast, and it is not above a wink: Megan Thee Stallion appears on the beach as a bystander asking how she can get one of the lifeguards to save her.
For actors, this cast is the story. The original Baywatch, which premiered on NBC in 1989, was cancelled after one season, then revived in syndication to run 11 seasons in more than 200 countries, was built the same way: a sturdy franchise lead, a deep ensemble of newcomers, and faces the audience felt it discovered. Fox is running that play again with modern pieces. Amell carries the legacy role after years of leading genre television. Belkin, Harrison, Mitchell and LaGrone bring series experience. Beck and Nader arrive from the creator economy with enormous built-in audiences. And Dunne, one of the most followed athletes in America, is taking her first acting role in the middle of it, in a part the show can grow at the speed she does.
That is the bet broadcast keeps making, and Baywatch is its purest test: put trained actors and first-timers in the same red swimsuits, give them a captain who has lived the franchise’s whole arc, and let the audience decide who becomes a star. On January 6, the beach decides.
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