MTV Reboot Recasts Major Character, Removes Another

HBO Max shared new details for the Clone High revival, which will feature some changes to the character lineup. The streamer also showed the first images from the new episodes during the show’s WonderCon panel on March 24, with the first teaser following on April 5. The former MTV series will return on HBO Max this spring. The revival was already renewed for a second season.

The original Clone High series was created by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, with Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence. Only 13 episodes were produced, airing between November 2002 and March 2003 on MTV. The show focuses on a high school where the students are teenage clones of historical figures. Despite its short run, the show was critically acclaimed and considered a major early step in Lord and Miller’s careers, long before they would go on to make Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, and The Lego Movie.

Seems like a good week for trailers so…
Here’s the teaser trailer for the long-awaited return of CLONE HIGH!!!!

Coming this spring on HBOMax… pic.twitter.com/tL65R7xboa

— Christopher Miller (@chrizmillr) April 5, 2023

Clone High ended with the characters flash-frozen in the high school’s meat locker during prom. In the revival, the clones are all thawed out and the military tries to revive the classmates and groom them to take over the world. There are new clones joining them while they navigate “a new set of cultural norms and overly dramatic teen relationships.”

Will Forte will return as Abraham Lincoln. Nicole Sullivan is back as Joan of Arc, while Miller voices John F. Kennedy and Mr. Lynn Butlerton. Lord voices Principal Scutdworth and Donald Faison voices Martin Luther King Jr. and George Washington Carver. The new voices include Ayo Edebiri as Harriet Tubman, Vicci Martinez as Frida Kahlo, Kelvin Yu as Confucius, Neil Casey as Topher Bus, Jana Schmieding as Sacagawea, Sam Richardson as Wesley, Mo Gaffney as Ms. Grumbles, Al Madrigal as Frederico, Danny Pudi as Dr. Neelankavil, Emily Maya Mills as Ethel Merman, Michael Bolton as Michael Bolton, Mandy Moore as Mandy Moore, Ian Ziering as Ian Ziering, and Steve Kerr as Steve Kerr.

Christa Miller (Cougar Town) is expected to return, but not as Cleopatra. In the new season, Mitra Jouhari (Big Mouth) will take that role, reports TVLine. Mahatma Gandhi, who was voiced by former MADtv star Michael McDonald, was removed from the show completely. Ghandi’s appearance in the show caused a firestorm in 2003, especially in India. MTV apologized, and Lord and Miller said a possible second season wouldn’t have included Ghandi. Another idea they had was revealing that Ghandi was actually a clone of Gary Coleman, but that idea was dropped.

“Everyone at MTV really liked the show, so when the edict came down, they said, ‘Hey, pitch us a version of the show’s second season that doesn’t have Gandhi,’” Miller told Grantland in 2014. “So we had two different versions: One was just that he was gone and nobody talked about it, and the other was where we kept the same character, but they realized there had been a mistake, and he wasn’t actually the clone of Gandhi, he was the clone of Gary Coleman. And we just called him Gary and everything was exactly the same. And we pitched that, and it went up to the top at Viacom again and it got a big no.”

Although the second season will be released on HBO Max, the original show is still exclusive to Paramount+ for the time being. The series was also released on DVD back in 2005.