Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, James Buckley and Blake Harrison are back for The Inbetweeners 3 at Netflix, with production starting on Monday 7 September. The new film brings the original four lead actors together again after two previous films that grossed over £100m worldwide.
James Buckley has already set the tone for the reboot. In February, he said: "I think the temperature at the moment is that people would like an Inbetweeners" and added, "It would release some sort of pressure. Just make sure we keep all that silly, disgusting humour. That’s what I assume people would want."
Bird, Thomas, Buckley, Harrison
The four returning cast members are Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, James Buckley and Blake Harrison, reprising Will, Simon, Jay and Neil for The Inbetweeners 3. That keeps the reunion tight around the original lineup rather than broadening it into a cast-wide nostalgia exercise.
Damon Beesley and Iain Morris are writing and directing the film. The pair are steering a project that has always traded on the contrast between the show’s teenage misery and the cleaner, more controlled version of a modern revival.
£100m from two films
The Inbetweeners originally ran on E4 from 2008 to 2010, won a Bafta Audience Award in 2010, and then expanded into The Inbetweeners Movie in 2011 and The Inbetweeners 2 in 2014. The two films together grossed over £100m worldwide, which is why a third outing is being treated as a commercial event rather than a hobby project.
The sitcom was conceived as a more realistic counterpoint to Skins, and that blunt, awkward tone still defines what the brand can sell. Buckley’s warning in February that any reboot should not be watered down for modern audiences suggests the new film will lean on the same edge that made the first run work.
Emily Atack still missing
Only the four lead cast members have been announced so far, and Emily Atack has not been included despite her role as Charlotte Hinchcliffe in The Inbetweeners. That leaves the reunion focused on the core quartet for now, with a fuller cast list still to be revealed before production begins.
A two-hour special aired on New Year’s Day in 2019 to mark the 10th anniversary of the sitcom’s debut, and Buckley later called that return a "mistake." This time, the project has a cleaner structure: a third film, a start date, and a screenplay already in place, which is usually the point at which a revival stops being nostalgia and starts becoming a release schedule.
