Ne-Yo, Naya Rivera To Headline YouTube Red’s Most Ambitious Series To Date

At VidCon last week, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said that a forthcoming Step Up series adaptation would be among the most ambitious projects to date for Red, the company’s premium subscription service.

Now, several casting announcements have been made for Step Up: High Water — a 10-episode drama based on the blockbuster dance movie franchise, which is slated to debut on YouTube Red this fall. The series will star singer-songwriter Ne-Yo, Naya Rivera (Glee), and Faizon Love (Elf). It will follow a group of young dancer’s at Atlanta’s High Water Performing Arts School. Production is currently under way by Lionsgate in Atlanta, according to Variety.

High Water’s executive producers include Hollywood heavyweight Adam Shankman (who also directed the pilot) and Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan Tatum — both of whom starred in the original Step Up movie. The series will feature original music by Grammy winner Jason ‘PooBear’ Boyd (Justin Bieber) and ‘Jingle’ Jared Gustadt

(Brad Paisley). The film’s original choreographer, Jamal Sims, will also return for the first episode, though subsequent installments will be choreographed by Jamaica Craft.

Other cast members include Lauryn McClain, Petrice Jones, Marcus Mitchell, Jade Chynoweth, Carlito Olivero, Terrence Green, R. Marcos Taylor, Eric Graise, and Kendra Oyesanya.

High Water marks the first-ever scripted drama series from YouTube Red, which is priced at $10 per month. YouTube first announced the project at VidCon in 2016, and it was initially slated to debut this summer. While YouTube has not broken out subscription data for Red, it announced at VidCon that its 37 original series have clocked a total of 250 million views thus far. Thirteen releases are slated for 2017.

There have been a total of five Step Up films to date, which have grossed a collective $651 million at the box office.