‘Bel-Air’ Spinoff ‘Hilary’ Starring Coco Jones in Development at Peacock

The Banks family isn’t done yet. Peacock is developing Hilary, a spinoff of its hit dramatic reimagining Bel-Air, with Coco Jones set to headline the project as the title character. If the series moves forward, it will make Bel-Air the streamer’s first scripted original to spin off into its own show.

The First Bel-Air Spinoff Ever

Hilary comes from writer-producer Tracy Oliver, co-writer of Girls Trip and Little, and marks the first spinoff in the history of the franchise that began with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1990. In a major sign of confidence in the property, the project hails from Will Smith’s Westbrook Studios alongside Universal Television, with the backing of a who’s who from the original show’s creative team, including Benny Medina, the Borowitz brothers, Morgan Cooper, and the estates of both Jeff Pollack and Quincy Jones.

Jones played Hilary Banks, Will Smith’s cousin, across all four seasons of Bel-Air — one of the rare pop-culture reboots that genuinely earned its dramatic reinvention. The mothership series followed Will Smith’s journey from the streets of West Philadelphia to the luxurious gated mansions of Bel-Air, trading the sitcom’s laugh track for serious drama and rich character development. It was a gamble that paid off spectacularly, turning a beloved 90s favorite into a prestige drama with real cultural weight. Since wrapping its four-season run in 2025, the show has left a devoted fanbase hungry for more Banks family stories.

Hilary Gets Her Own Story

According to the official logline, Hilary’s spinoff sees her strike out on her own: “After accepting an unexpected job offer from celebrity chef Yvonne Durand, Hilary Banks impulsively moves to New York determined to prove herself beyond her Bel-Air connections — only to find that success, friendship and love in the city come with a cost she never anticipated.”

It’s a fitting evolution for a character who was always the outsider looking for more. Jones brings her own star power to the role — she began as a Disney Channel favorite before landing Bel-Air, and she has since become a rising force in both music and acting, blending the polish of a trained performer with the relatability of someone who has genuinely earned her place. As Hilary, she turned a character who could easily have been dismissed as comic relief into one of the show’s most compelling figures, making the idea of a solo vehicle feel not just viable but inevitable.

Executive producers on Hilary include Jones and Oliver alongside Will Smith, Terence Carter, David Boorstein and Miguel Melendez of Westbrook Studios, plus Benny Medina, Andy Borowitz, Susan Borowitz, Morgan Cooper, the Jeff Pollack trust and the Quincy Jones estate — a creative bench that signals how seriously everyone involved is taking this.

Why This Move Makes Sense

Spinoffs are a classic TV play — take a beloved supporting character, hand them a spotlight, and let their story breathe. It worked for countless franchises across network and streaming television, from workplace comedies to prestige dramas. Bel-Air, with its deep ensemble of rich, fully-realized characters, was always a natural candidate, even if the franchise had never attempted one in three-plus decades. The world-building, the family dynamic, and the modern-sitcom-as-drama formula all lend themselves to expansion.

For Peacock, Hilary represents a chance to build a shared universe around its biggest scripted hit. Streaming services spent years chasing prestige originals, but the real loyalty — and the real audience — often lives in familiar characters and worlds. Spinning off a fan favorite is one of the lowest-risk, highest-reward moves a platform can make, which is why networks and streamers keep returning to it time and again. And there’s a bigger strategic play at work: in an era when every platform is trimming budgets and leaning on established IP, a proven franchise with an existing audience is about as safe a bet as the premium-TV world offers.

The Legacy of the Banks Family

Part of what made Bel-Air work was that it never lost sight of the heart at its center. Even with its prestige-drama surface, the show kept the family-first energy of the sitcom that inspired it — the arguments, the warmth, the way these people genuinely care about one another even when they’re driving each other crazy. A Hilary spinoff is the perfect vehicle for that energy, because she was always the one pushing to define herself outside her family’s shadow.

In some ways, the spinoff is a full-circle moment for a franchise built on reinvention. The original Fresh Prince made Will Smith a household name, launching a peerless career in film and television — a journey chronicled in retrospectives like The Real! Will Smith: Fresh Prince or Bad Boy?. The Bel-Air reboot proved the premise still had dramatic legs decades later, and now a supporting character gets her moment — transplanted from the serene enclave of Los Angeles to the chaotic energy of New York City.

For fans of the show, Hilary offers a chance to follow a favorite character into entirely new territory. New York is a different beast than Bel-Air, and Hilary — confident, driven, and determined to make it on her own — is exactly the kind of character you want to watch navigate it. Whether she finds the success she’s chasing or learns the cost of leaving her family’s orbit, it’s a story with built-in emotional stakes and a charismatic lead already beloved by the audience.

What’s Next

The project is still in development, with no word yet on a greenlight, casting beyond Jones, or a potential release window. As streaming spinoffs go, it’s early days — but the creative pedigree, the built-in fanbase, and the strong track record of everyone attached make Hilary one of the most anticipated projects in development right now.

For anyone who caught up on Bel-Air during its run, the idea of more Banks family drama is an easy sell. And if Hilary finds its footing the way Bel-Air did, Peacock could have a genuine franchise on its hands — not just a single hit, but an expanding world worth returning to season after season.