company, ordered thirteen episodes of the new show. Filming began on July 3, 2001, and the show premiered on CTV on October 14, 2001. Although the original Degrassi series were widely popular in Canada, The Next Generation garnered a massive following in the United States and ran for fourteen seasons. The series is known for featuring several actors who went on to achieve wider recognition and stardom since their time on the series, most notably Canadian actor-turned-rapper Drake, who starred in The Next Generation. Drake portrayed Jimmy Brooks, a basketball star who became physically disabled after he was shot by a classmate. When asked about his early acting career, Drake replied, "My mother was very sick. We were very poor, like broke. The only money I had coming in was [from] Canadian TV." Nina Dobrev, who portrayed Mia Jones, went on to star as the lead character of the popular supernatural teen drama television series The Vampire Diaries. During the show's ninth season, the producers were informed in a meeting with CTV executives that the network did not plan to renew the show. At the same time, Stephen Stohn was in talks with TeenNick to produce 48 episodes of a telenovela-style teen show, which he later pitched as the tenth season of Degrassi: The Next Generation. To promote the series on the new network, TeenNick commissioned a promotional music video, set to "Shark in the Water" by V V Brown and themed around a carnival and circus, which contained clues foreshadowing later events of the season. The promo was extremely successful. According to Stephen Stohn, MuchMusic, the network that the series moved to from CTV in Canada, cited the promo as having improved the network's ratings significantly. Season 10 premiered on July 19, 2010, and marked a change in production style to a telenovela/soap opera format, and for the first time, episodes airing in Canada and the United States on the same day. "The Next Generation" was also dropped from the title, which became simply Degrassi. Degrassi was cancelled after fourteen seasons, and a spin off series called Degrassi: Next Class aired on Netflix for four seasons from 2016 to 2017. Season one was released on Netflix January 15, 2016, and started airing January 4, 2016, on Family's new teen programming block, F2N. Fourteen cast members from season 14 of Degrassi also reprised their roles. On March 7, 2019, Stefan