When Celeste Hughey first started working as showrunner on a TV reimagining of the 1989 Tom Hanks horror-comedy movie The ’Burbs she noticed something interesting.
“Whenever I would mention I was working on it, people either had never heard of the movie or were absolutely obsessed,” Hughey tells Polygon.
The original version of The ’Burbs is perhaps the definition of a cult classic. Directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins), this PG-rated movie with some genuine scares likely introduced a generation of kids to the delights of the horror genre. It played on cable TV throughout the ’90s and found a fandom in anyone lucky enough to stumble across it, myself included. Hughey, who was born the same year the film came out, recalls watching it for the first time when she was “too young.” But in the years since, she’s come to appreciate it as a sharp commentary on American suburbia.
“I’ve probably watched it a thousand times,” Hughey says. “I know every little nook and cranny of that movie. It’s been so fun to infuse new life into it.”
Streaming now on Peacock, the 2026 ’Burbs uses the original film’s premise of a group of cul-de-sac residents (led by Hanks as a bored white-collar dad) who grow suspicious of their creepy new neighbors. But the show adds a modern twist. The story begins when a Black woman named Samira Fisher (Nope star Keke Palmer) leaves the big city with husband Rob (Jack Whitehall) and their newborn baby, and moves into Rob’s old childhood home. Samira’s overwhelmingly white neighbors are unwelcoming at first, but soon accept her into their community — especially once they’re united by a creepy new interloper who buys the abandoned house across the street. As with the 1989 movie, their initially unfounded suspicions eventually help reveal some disturbing truths.
The original plan was to remake The ’Burbs as a new movie, but producers Seth MacFarlane and Brian Grazer quickly realized the story was big enough for an entire series. So they brought in Hughey, and she got to work reimagining the original story.
“I wanted to enter this world through the outsider’s perspective,” she says. That outsider was always going to be played by Palmer: “I really always wanted Keke to star in the show. To me, she’s the essence of Tom Hanks: charismatic, funny, dramatic, all of the things that we love about him. I knew she could carry the torch for him in a series.”
Palmer took a bit more convincing, mostly because she’d never seen the film. Once she watched The ’Burbs and read Hughey’s script, however, she quickly understood the story’s appeal.
“This is a fish out of water,” Palmer says. “This is a new person coming into the ’burbs. We talk about things that are very contemporary, so it’s a way of honoring the old, but also remaking it in its own way.”
While the Peacock series takes the original premise in lots of new directions (with plenty of time to explore the quirks of Samira’s quirky new neighbors), it’s also full of Easter eggs for fans of the original. Each episode is titled after a quotable line from the movie, the Fisher family’s name is a tribute to Carrie Fisher (who plays Tom Hanks’ wife in the 1989 movie), and a dog on the show named Darla is a reference to the real name of Queenie, the dog from the 1989 film.
The best throwback, however, is a recreation of the iconic sardine scene from the original movie, in which those creepy new neighbors invite the community into their home and feed Hanks’ character a plate of canned sardines and pretzels. On the show, Palmer reenacts that moment.
“Keke ate real sardines all day to make it really authentic,” Hughey.
Luckily, the actress didn’t mind.
“I am from the Midwest; I love sardines,” Palmer says. “Canned fish is not abnormal to me. I remember even going fishing with my dad and getting sardines and stuff. So yeah, I was cool with it. Not bad at all.”
Beyond paying tribute to the original, Hughey saw The ’Burbs as a chance to portray her own experience growing up in the Boston suburbs.
“Part of what I wanted Samira to experience is what I did growing up as a Black kid in a pretty white neighborhood,” she says. “I always wanted to center it on a Black woman going into this neighborhood, not being sure who to trust, who is welcoming to her, who is questioning her presence. I wanted to make sure it was authentic and have those real microaggressions in the story.”
Palmer also sees a horror-comedy like The ‘Burbs as a chance to take on complex topics through a pop culture lens: “I love the way that you can talk about big themes in a way that feels unique.”
She compares The ’Burbs to the work of Norman Lear, the celebrated sitcom writer who tackled social, political, and economic issues through popular TV shows like All in the Family and Sanford and Son in the 1970s and ’80s.
“Those earlier sitcoms didn’t shy away from talking about racial tensions or classism or all these different things that were happening in the world; they brought them to the forefront in a way that exposed them to the audience,” Palmer says. “I think that’s a lot of what’s happening in The ’Burbs. We bring those things to the surface, but then expose something much more nuanced underneath.”
All eight episodes of The ’Burbs are streaming now on Peacock.
