ATLANTA — Netflix is going to film a pilot for a sequel to “A Different World” in Atlanta in July.

The cast has not been announced yet.

Both Productionlist.com and the local union IATSE 479, which covers most crew members, confirmed the pilot’s shooting city.

The original “A Different World,” which recently began streaming on Netflix, aired from 1987 to 1993, the first scripted series in TV history to be based at a historically Black college. It was a spinoff of the iconic 1980s sitcom “The Cosby Show.”

As announced last August, the sequel returns to the fictional Hillman College and follows the daughter of original series characters Whitley (Jasmine Guy) and Dwayne (Kadeem Hardison.)

Felicia Pride, a writer for “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Queen Sugar,” has been hired as the executive producer and showrunner. Debbie Allen, who produced and directed a bulk of the original’s 144 episodes, will return as a producer and is expected to direct the pilot, according to Variety.

Netflix has typically given an entire season for its new scripted shows. But a recent Variety story said executives wanted to gauge the show’s tone and chemistry among the ensemble cast before committing to a full season.

Broadcast networks used to rely heavily on pilot episodes before the streaming era began. They’d shoot twice as many pilots as they needed, then pick out the best ones to give an entire season of episodes. This could mean at least 30 pilots per year. But that standard has largely died off as revenues and viewership have waned.

Across the four broadcast networks this spring, not even 10 pilots were shot for the upcoming 2025-26 season. Netflix, of course, has no season. It releases new shows almost every week of the year.

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