Jessica Biel Says '7th Heaven' Is Getting a Modern Reboot, and It Won't Hold Back

Image via Jerry Wolfe / ©Spelling Prod. / Courtesy Everett Collection Published Oct 22, 2026, 7:00 AM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Actress and producer Jessica Biel made a name for herself on the big screen in Hollywood headlining as the final girl in 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot before establishing herself as an action heroine in movies like Blade: Trinity and The A-Team. A few decades later, she earned an Emmy Award nomination for her performance in The Sinner, led a hit miniseries with Hulu’s Candy, and most recently, worked opposite John Cena in Apple TV’s Matchbox: The Movie. In Matchbox, inspired by Mattel’s iconic toy cars, a group of childhood friends (Biel, Teyonah Parris, Sam Richardson, and Arturo Castro) embark on a dangerous adventure when an old pal comes home, Cena's Sean. He's now an undercover CIA agent and when he returns to their small town, he unwittingly pulls them into an international mission to save the world. But, before the accolades and the globe-trotting blockbusters, Biel made her on-screen debut as Mary Camden in the long-running series 7th Heaven. Thirty years later, she’s stepping behind the camera, taking on the role of producer for its upcoming reboot with CBS Studios. Ahead of a release date, Biel shared exciting new details about what viewers can expect from a modern take on a mid-90s after-school television show while chatting with Perri Nemiroff for Collider Ladies Night. Why Isn’t Jessica Biel in the ‘7th Heaven’ Reboot? The former Camden family member is determined to create a safe space on set. Image via CBS In 2007, Biel co-founded Iron Ocean Productions with colleague and best friend Michelle Purple, whom she met on the set of the sci-fi action movie Stealth with Jamie Foxx and Josh Lucas. She tells Nemiroff she was only 22 at the time, and Purple, who was running Rob Cohen’s company then, quickly became not only someone on set she could reach out to but an inspiration for the young actress. "She really had her shit together, and I did not. I just had a dream. I just had a big dream." "She was producing this massive movie with this really mercurial, interesting director, like tough personality, big personality, running this huge set with all these different action sequences and this big cast, and she was just this awesome, fun, bubbly, super feminine woman. She was such a dichotomy of things, and funny and cool, and I just wanted to be her friend so bad." Biel goes on to explain how they decided to start their own company: "She and I just started talking about wanting something different, and craving more autonomy and a bigger voice, and wanting to generate material and really find things that we were really, really passionate about. At that point, I said, ‘Well, let's make a company. Let's start a company together.’ And she was like, ‘I don't know how to do that. Do you?’ I was like, ‘No. I have no idea.’ We had no idea what we were doing, and that was over 20 years ago, which is kind of wild. We've been doing this for a very, very long time and only just recently found a lot of success. So, it just takes a lot of time under tension for things like this." Image via Columbia Pictures /courtesy Everett Collection After forging her own space as a producer, rather than reprise her role as Mary in 7th Heaven, Biel has discovered where she can best serve the reboot. So what can we expect from Biel as a producer for the show? "When I'm on set as a producer, I'm always thinking about the safety net of the set and the communication that you hope you can have — free-flowing communication with your actors and your crew. You just want to create a safe place for people to be really creative and really vulnerable, because a lot of the stuff that I'm doing now, the content that I'm doing now, it's emotional stuff. It's people really putting themselves out there on the chopping block emotionally, and if you don't have that space protected, I think it's hard. It's hard to give those kinds of performances. So, I think that's what I'm constantly trying to do as a producer is just build out that space where everyone feels like they will be taken care of, and it's safe, you know?" Jessica Biel Says the '7th Heaven' Reboot Won’t Hold Back Like the Original "We have less limitations now." When The WB aired the first episode of 7th Heaven in 1996, Brenda Hampton’s family-friendly series offered viewers at home a PG haven about the trials and tribulations of growing up. It premiered not too long before The WB’s more mature shows like Dawson’s Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer swept the network, which tackled issues like sex, trauma, and mental health. For 11 seasons, 7th Heaven addressed a wide range of issues from a conservative, Protestant viewpoint, following Reverend Eric Camden (Stephen Collins), Annie Camden (Catherine Hicks), and their seven children throughout their daily lives. Over the course of 243 episodes, the Camdens approached the hardships and joys of life as a family, facing everything from grief and peer pressure to premarital sex and periods. To say the world has changed over the last three decades would be a massive understatement. So, is there still a place for a show like 7th Heaven among its peers, like Euphoria, Heartstopper, or The Summer I Turned Pretty? Biel believes so. When Nemiroff asked what it was about the original show that could withstand the test of time, she explained: "It feels like what was working back then is family, right? I'm looking for what I can watch with my kids on television. It's limited. I cannot watch a lot of these things with them, and they love TV, and it's my business. My husband, we're in this business together doing these things, and we can't share a lot of that with our kids. So, I think the idea of whatever faith you want to have, that's important. That we don't have a lot on television, whether you believe that or go down that road or not. There are a lot of people that really do want to walk down that road, so I think some kind of faith, some kind of family, community, and maybe something not so jaded, like something a little bit more glass-half-full. It's not that it's soft, because it's realistic." Image via Jerry Wolfe / ©Spelling Prod. / Courtesy Everett Collection As for how the show will keep up with the times, Biel shares what 7th Heaven hopes to navigate, revealing that the reboot won't be as restrained by "limitations." "What we want to create, how we want to modernize it, is really the things that are happening for teenagers and families that have teenagers all the way down to the youngest child — technology-based issues, school stuff, bullying stuff, drugs, alcohol. All of those things we want to address in a very real way, which is, I think, what the original kind of gently touched on, but we were very careful about what our audience wanted. We had a lot of limitations. We have less limitations now. We still want to keep the DNA of what it was, where you can sit down and watch with your families, but we're not going to hold back, I think, as much as we did before." You can catch Biel in Matchbox: The Movie, available now on Apple TV, and don't miss the full Ladies Night conversation in the video at the top of this article! Release Date October 9, 2026 Runtime 127 minutes Director Sam Hargrave Writers David Coggeshall Producers Dana Goldberg, David Ellison, Don Granger, Jules Daly, Robbie Brenner, Ynon Kreiz