It focuses on the lives of Zoey Brooks (Jamie Lynn Spears), her brother Dustin (Paul Butcher), and her friends as they attend Pacific Coast Academy, a fictional boarding school in Southern California.

The series centers around Zoey Brooks as she enrolls in Pacific Coast Academy, a prestigious Southern California boarding school that previously only allowed boys to attend.

"[9] In August 2003, Spears officially signed a development deal with Nickelodeon in which she would star as the protagonist in her own scripted television series that would air on the network.

Spears stated that she can still vividly recall her first meeting to talk about this show, if only for the setting: Houston's in Santa Monica, her favorite at the time.

"[10][11] As the show began casting, Paul Butcher was hired to play opposite Zoey as her younger brother Dustin Brooks.

Actress Erin Sanders had auditioned for Nicole, the part of Zoey's best-friend and roommate, but the role was eventually offered to Alexa Nikolas.

Rounding out the cast were Kristin Herrera as Dana Cruz, Christopher Massey as Michael Barret, and Matthew Underwood as Logan Reese.

[14] Once the summer semester began, production was limited to where they could film, only being permitted to use one lounge in Tower 6 of Rockwell, in addition to Alumni Park and the Hahn Fireside Room.

Specifically, they were upset about the number of parking spaces being taken up by production, and the occasional reroute around campus they had to take to avoid filming.

The second season also included more involvement from Pepperdine students; some were able to join production as interns and receive college credit, while others were hired as background actors and extras.

The success of the show's first season meant paparazzi would sneak onto campus trying to photograph Britney Spears when she visited set.

When Karen Fisher, the senior director of production for Nickelodeon, couldn't find anything that would work, she called on David Diamond, who pointed her towards the Mann Biomedical Park in the Santa Clarita Valley, which was built by Lockheed to resemble a college campus.

The Mann Biomedical Park also featured the same type of exterior walkway lighting as Pepperdine, which meant less work for production.

The location had extensive warehouses which could be converted into makeshift soundstages, giving production ample space to recreate the interiors of Pepperdine with sets.

“You buy that there is ocean out there.” Mann Biomedical Park also featured a basketball court, and several tree lined walkways for production to use.

Alexa Nikolas exited after the second season, following numerous fights and incidents with Jamie Lynn Spears, and her character Nicole was written out of the series.

[20] The series officially ended production in August 2007 after the shooting of its final season, which began airing five months later in January 2008.

When Chase proposes to his current girlfriend Alyssa (Jamie Snow), Michael storms in and informs him of what Zoey said on her DVD from "Time Capsule".

After reuniting with many of her former cast mates on All That in late 2019, with the sketch later aired on July 11, 2020, Spears revealed during a podcast in May 2020, that she was interested in developing a possible revival and that discussions had already been underway, but nothing was official at the time as many details of the potential project had yet to be confirmed.

[26] On January 12, 2023, Jamie Lynn Spears announced that production had begun on a sequel film entitled Zoey 102, set to premiere in 2023 on Paramount+, with original series cast members Spears, Sean Flynn, Christopher Massey, Erin Sanders, Matthew Underwood, Jack Salvatore Jr., and Abby Wilde reprising their roles.

[49] Speculation about on-set conflicts began in August 2005, when reports surfaced that Britney Spears confronted Alexa Nikolas and proceeded to scream at her, calling her an "evil little girl" and telling her to "...watch herself or she will never work in this town again!

[22] Some parents of viewers were furious, and shortly after they began demanding Nickelodeon not air the fourth season, as they saw it as a bad influence on their children.

[55] In response to the criticism, an episode of Nick News was going to be made surrounding the topic of teen pregnancy, which would have given the network a chance to address the issue with children in a non-fiction setting.

[57] New York Daily News television critic David Hinckley labeled Spears' pregnancy a "sordid moment" for Nickelodeon, and added "if [they keep] Jamie Lynn Spears because her product sells, it runs the risk that a valuable message it has spent years crafting could shift from 'trust us' to 'whatever'.

"[58] On January 3, 2008, the night before the third-season finale, the executive vice president of corporate communications for Nickelodeon, Dan Martinsen, revealed the network had no intention of shelving the fourth and final season – which had finished production before Spears announced her pregnancy – and it would premiere later that month as scheduled; Martinsen would not comment on if the network had been receiving any complaints.

[79] Both video games were published by THQ and developed by Barking Lizards and received poor reception and negative reviews from sites such as IGN and Common Sense Media.

[clarification needed] They involve delivering things to people or collecting objects scattered around the school before time runs out.