Fox's 'Baywatch' Reboot Trailer Is Here: Stephen Amell Suits Up as Hobie Buchannon for a January Premiere

The red swimsuits are back on the sand. On Tuesday, October 13, Fox released the full official trailer for its Baywatch reboot, as Polygon and the Motion Picture Association's The Credits both reported — the first full-length look at a revival that has been building all year through short teaser promos. The series, led by Stephen Amell as Baywatch captain Hobie Buchannon, premieres on Fox in January 2027; the network has not announced an exact date.

Fox is not hiding its strategy. The trailer, which runs roughly three minutes, opens the franchise's whole toy box: a plane crashing into the ocean, a wildfire burning in the hills above the beach, a lifeguard tower exploding, rescues staged at maximum spectacle — and, underneath it all, the original theme song, “I'm Always Here,” back where a generation of viewers expects to hear it. Per The Credits' breakdown of the footage, the plane tears through a paragliding duo before hitting the water, and the lifeguards' first big set piece is a rescue of the pilot from the ocean floor. It is absurd, it is enormous, and it is exactly the point.

A Buchannon Story, One Generation Later

The reboot's smartest decision is its lead character. Amell — best known as Oliver Queen across the Arrowverse — plays Hobie Buchannon, the son of Mitch Buchannon, the lifeguard David Hasselhoff made famous in the original series, where Hobie was played as a kid by Jeremy Jackson. The new series is therefore less a remake than a sequel in reboot's clothing: Hobie has grown up, followed his father into the family business, and risen to captain, leading the lifeguard team that patrols the Los Angeles coastline.

Then the past knocks. As Polygon and The Credits both describe the trailer, Hobie's life is turned upside down when Charlie Vale, played by Jessica Belkin, shows up — first on the beach, then at his home. Charlie is the daughter he never knew, and she is not looking for money or a reunion tour. She wants a job: to become a Baywatch lifeguard and carry on the Buchannon family legacy herself. That single premise gives the series its spine — a captain who knows exactly how dangerous the water is, deciding whether to let his own daughter run toward it in a red swimsuit.

The New Crew on the Tower

Amell and Belkin do not patrol alone. The ensemble named across the trailer coverage includes Shay Mitchell, Hassie Harrison as Nat, Noah Beck as Luke, Thaddeus LaGrone as Brad, and Livvy Dunne as Grace, per mxdwn's account of the cast. Brooks Nader plays Selene — notably, the captain of a rival stretch of beach, which hands the series a built-in turf rivalry alongside the rescues. And for viewers who measure a revival by its connective tissue, original-series star David Chokachi returns as Cody Madison in a recurring role, per mxdwn and ComingSoon.

The trailer also saves a pop flourish for late: Megan Thee Stallion appears, per Polygon and The Credits — spotted around the two-and-a-half-minute mark, playing on the show's long tradition of the beach as a place where Los Angeles celebrity and lifeguard drama share the same sand. Fox had been seeding this ensemble all month, releasing four shorter teaser promos earlier in October built around cast pairings — Amell with Belkin, Harrison with Beck, Mitchell with Nader, Dunne with LaGrone — before Tuesday's full trailer put the whole crew in the water at once.

The Team Behind the Revival

The creative bench is built for exactly this assignment. Matt Nix — creator of Burn Notice and showrunner of The Gifted — serves as showrunner and executive producer, per mxdwn's report via Deadline. Around him, the franchise's original architects are back in the credits: Michael Berk, Greg Bonann and Doug Schwartz, the creators of the 1989 series, are executive producers, alongside McG, Dante Di Loreto and Mike Horowitz. That mix — a proven network-action showrunner plus the people who built the original phenomenon — is Fox signaling that this is a continuation of a legacy, not a licensing exercise.

The road here was not short. Fox originally aimed the series at a fall launch before pushing it to a midseason berth in late January, per the trailer coverage — a move that reads less like trouble than positioning: January gives a bright, escapist beach drama a clean runway away from the fall premiere pile-up. The first season runs 12 episodes, and filming put the cast on Venice Beach earlier this year, where the new crew was photographed in the red suits back in March. By the time the teasers started landing in October, the marketing had a rhythm — pairings first, full trailer second, premiere in January.

Why This Beach Still Matters

It is easy to forget how big the original Baywatch was. Premiering on NBC in 1989 and then thriving in syndication for 11 seasons, it became one of the most-watched television shows on Earth — a global phenomenon built on a formula so legible it needed no translation: beautiful coastline, life-or-death rescues, soap-operatic personal stakes, and slow motion used like a house style. The trailer's wager is that the formula is not dated, just dormant — and that a legacy sequel, with a Buchannon on the tower and his daughter demanding her own rescue can, is the right way to wake it up.

Judgment, as always, waits for January. The trailer has done its job: it told longtime fans their show is being taken seriously, and it told everyone else why a lifeguard drama became a worldwide obsession in the first place. Baywatch premieres on Fox in January 2027. For more of today's entertainment news, see our coverage of the first trailer for Greta Gerwig's Narnia and tonight's VisionQuest premiere on Disney+ — and keep the news front open as the midseason announcements roll on.