TV news roundup: San Diego Comic Con, Star Trek, Marvel, Westworld, His Dark Materials and much, much more
Welcome to the weekly TV news round-up, where we go into the latest TV news regarding renewals, cancellations, and pick-ups. This week we have the news over the past two weeks.
Renewed
NBC has come back on its cancellation of bad teacher comedy series A.P. Bio, renewing it for a third season. There is a catch, though. The new season will be on the upcoming NBCUniversal streaming service.
Amazon Prime Video has renewed its adaption of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic The Boys for a second season.
Cable channel FXX has renewed its animated spy comedy Archer for an 11th season.
American streaming service DC Universe has renewed its fantastically bonkers DC Comics adaption Doom Patrol, which shares a universe with Titans, for a second season!
DC Universe also renewed its animated series revival of Young Justice for a fourth season. Season 3 is currently being released.
Cable channel TV Land has renewed its comedy series Younger, about a woman in her 40s passing for one in her 20s, for a seventh season.
Cable channel TNT has renewed its crime family series Animal Kingdom for a fifth season.
HBO has renewed its Spanish language supernatural comedy Los Espookys for a second season.
American streaming service Hulu’s dystopian series The Handmaid’s Tale, based upon Margaret Atwood 1985 novel, will return for a fourth season! Season 3 is currently being released.
Netflix’s animated puberty comedy Big Mouth has been renewed for a fourth, fifth and sixth season. It basically will go on just as long as puberty.
Sci-fi series The Expanse has found a good new home at Amazon Prime Video after it was cancelled by Syfy after Season 3. Amazon has renewed the series for a fifth season!
AMC has renewed Fear the Walking Dead for a sixth season. Currently, Season 5 is on hiatus and will continue on Sunday, August 11.
Cancelled
CBS has cancelled its military legal drama The Code after one season of twelve episodes.
It was a short term for Designated Survivor on Netflix. Saved for a third season by the streaming service, after ABC cancelled it, the political drama starring Kiefer Sutherland (24) is now again cancelled.
Netflix has also cancelled its animated bird comedy Tuca & Bertie after one season.
After being revived for three seasons by NBC, the comedy series Will & Grace will come to an end (again) with 2020’s Season 11.
Picked up
A TV adaption of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels has landed at Amazon Prime Video. Nick Santora (Scorpion) will write the series. Previously, Tom Cruise starred in two movies adapting the novel series about a military vet who now roams the land helping people where he wants to help.
**Breaking NEWS!!*
'Scorpion' creator Nick Santora will adapt the best-selling novels by Lee Child for a potentially huge franchise for the tech giant's Prime Video platform.#JackReacher https://t.co/ZdKXEbPpDZ— Lee Child (@LeeChildReacher) July 15, 2019
Upcoming streaming service HBO Max has picked up a reboot of The CW series Gossip Girl. It might be connected to the original series that ran for six seasons between 2007 and 2012. The new series will at least have a first season of ten episodes. Series creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are on board as executive producers.
Cable channel FX has picked up The Old Man, starring Jeff Bridges (Iron Man). Based upon Thomas Perry’s 2017 novel, it tells the story of a former CIA operative who has been living off the grid for decades, but when he has to fight off an assassin it is time to reconcile with his past. Jon Steinberg and Robert Levine (Black Sails) are writing for the series.
Premium channel Starz has given a series order to a prequel series to Dangerous Liaisons. The series will tell the story prior to Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ novel, first published in France in 1782. The novel tells the story of Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont. These two narcissistic rivals and ex-lovers use seduction as a tool to manipulate others. The prequel will tell how the two met, from the perspective of Marquise de Merteuil. This is by far not the first adaption of the novel. It has been adapted as a stage play, an opera, a ballet, radio plays, movies and TV series. It even received a fictionalized sequel by Philippa Stockley in 2005 called A Factory of Cunning, and its narration by letters was updated to the modern-day to tweets in 2013’s Dangerous Tweets. Among its movie adaptions you might know the 1988 movie Dangerous Liaisons directed by Stephen Frears and starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman, and Roger Kumble’s 1999 modern retelling Cruel Intentions, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Selma Blair and Reese Witherspoon. Here’s the trailer for the 1988 movie to get a taste…
Marvel Studios has announced a host of Marvel Cinematic Universe-set TV series for upcoming streaming service Disney+ at San Diego Comic Con International. If you want to know which ones and how they tie into the movies, please have a look at our article.
Other developments
Fox renewed Seth MacFarlane’s sci-fi series and Star Trek homage The Orville for a third season. What is news is that the series will move from Fox to American streaming service Hulu. The high production load that comes with the series made it quite hard to fit it into a broadcast schedule. At Hulu Season 3 will premiere late 2020.
Talking about Star Trek, a first look has been given of animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks. Coming to CBS All Access soon.
Take a peek at the character designs for #LowerDecks 👀 #StarTrek #StarTrekLowerDecks https://t.co/TzBvDUCGCc pic.twitter.com/SF83CYJTZh
— Star Trek (@StarTrek) July 25, 2019
Deadline knows that US streaming service Hulu is working on another adaption of sci-fi comedy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Carlton Cuse (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Locke & Key) and Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman) are writing the series. Created by Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy started out as a BBC radio play in 1978. After this there were also stage shows, novels, comic books, a 1981 TV series, a 1984 video game, and in 2005 a theatrical movie directed by Garth Jennings (Son of Rambow) and starring Martin Freeman (Black Panther), Sam Rockwell (Moon), Mos Def (The Italian Job) and Zooey Deschanel (New Girl), among others. The story starts when a normal bloke is taken away off Earth, which is about to be demolished, by his best friend who turns out to be an alien. This alien friend is working on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
American cable channel AMC is developing another comic adaption. Farmhand is an Image comic written by and illustrated by Rob Guillory since 2018. It tells the story of farmer Jedidiah Jenkins, who grows human organs for transplantation. This went well for decades, but something dark has now taken root in the soil. LaToya Morgan (Into the Badlands) is overseeing the development.
We already knew that Netflix renewed the adaption of DC imprint Vertigo’s Lucifer for a fifth and final season. What is news is that it will have six more episodes than Season 4, 16 in total!
Hot of the press!!!! @LuciferNetflix final season will be 16 episodes!!!!!
😈#lucifer https://t.co/V1aT93QirA— tom ellis (@tomellis17) July 26, 2019
Trailers
On Friday, August 2 Season 3 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power will be released on Netflix.
At San Diego Comic Con AMC released a trailer for the fourth and final season of supernatural comic book adaption Preacher, which starts on Sunday, August 4.
On Thursday, August 8 Netflix will release the first season of Wu Assassins, a material arts series starring Iko Uwais (The Raid), Katheryn Winnick (Vikings) and others. The trailer makes us wonder if Netflix read the Iron Fist comics after making that series.
Netflix has released a trailer for the revival movie of Nickelodeon cartoon Rocko’s Modern Life, called Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling. It will be released on Friday, August 9.
At Comic Con AMC released a trailer for the second season of horror anthology series The Terror, which starts on Monday, August 12.
American streaming service CBS All Access has released a trailer for its cross decade drama series Why Women Kill, which premieres on Thursday, August 15.
At San Diego Comic Con International Netflix released a sneak peak of Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, a prequel to the 1982 movie, which is released on Friday, August 30.
Amazon Prime Video has release a couple of featurettes for its fantasy series Carnival Row, premiering Friday, August 30.
FX has released a trailer for the second season of Sons of Anarchy spin-off sequel Mayans M.C., which starts on Tuesday, September 3.
Amazon Prime Video has release a trailer for two-hour long Transparant: The Musical Finale, which will wrap the comedic drama series up after four seasons and 40 regular episodes. Originally this was supposed to be Season 5, but when actor Jeffrey Tambor was fired from the series over sexual harassment allegations, plans were changed. The finale will premiere on Friday, September 27.
Coming in September on niche streaming service Shudder is Creepshow.
At San Diego Comic Con International AMC released a trailer for the upcoming tenth season of The Walking Dead and the first of a trilogy of movies, which turn out to be theatrical releases now. Season 10 starts on Sunday, October 6.
The CW and Warner Bros. TV have released trailers for their DC Comics-based series at San Diego Comic-Con International. Supergirl Season 5 starts on Sunday, October 6 together with the first episode of Batwoman. The Flash Season 6 will premiere on Tuesday, October 8 and will be joined by Arrow Season 8 on Tuesday, October 15. DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will join the other series midway the big Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover in early January.
Still unconnected The CW DC series Black Lightning also has an SDCC trailer and will premiere Season 3 on Monday, October 21.
Hulu has released a teaser trailer for its eight-episode adaption of John Green’s 2005 teen drama novel Looking for Alaska, which will be released on Friday, October 18.
At Comic-Con the first bit of footage of the fourth season of Adult Swim’s animated sci-fi series Rick and Morty has been released. New episodes are expected in November.
Released by Amazon Prime Video was a teaser trailer for the second trailer of spy thriller series Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. No release date has been given yet.
DC Universe has released a first look at adult animated series Harley Quinn at San Diego Comic-Con International. The series, starring the voice talent of Kaley Cuoco (The Big Bang Theory), starts in October.
At SDCC HBO released a trailer for the much anticipated TV adaption of DC comic Watchmen, which will be a soft sequel to both the comic and movie, whichever one you like. The series will start in October.
HBO has also released a trailer for Dame Helen Mirren starring miniseries Catherine the Great, which will premiere this Autumn.
Also at SDCC a trailer was released of Van Helsing Season 4, which premieres on Syfy this Autumn.
YouTube Premium has released a first look of the second season of sci-fi series Impulse, the sequel series to the 2008 movie Jumper and based upon the 2013 novel of the same name by Steven Gould.
At San Diego Comic-Con International CBS All Access released a teaser trailer for much-anticipated sci-fi series Star Trek: Picard, which finally continues the Star Trek universe after the events of the TV series Star Trek: Voyager and the movie Star Trek: Nemesis. The series will premiere sometime later this year and will be released internationally on Amazon Prime Video.
Also at Comic-Con Amazon Prime Video released a teaser trailer for sci-fi series The Expanse’s Season 4, which will be released on Friday, December 13.
Netflix released a first trailer of their TV adaption of Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher fantasy novel series (not the CD Projekt Red video games, which are chronologically set after and are semi-canon). The first season is expected to be released in late 2019.
Cable channel TBS has released a trailer for their TV adaption of 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige Snowpiercer, which also was adapted to film in 2013. The series, which is already renewed for a second season, will premiere in Spring 2020.
Released at SDCC by HBO was a trailer for sci-fi series Westworld’s Season 3, which will be with us in 2020.
Disney Channel has given us a sneak peek for the further adventures of the Duck family in Season 2 of DuckTales!
ABC and Marvel TV have released a Comic-Con trailer for the remaining episodes of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 6. We cannot recommend watching it if you are not up-to-date with the season!
BBC and HBO have released an extended trailer for their upcoming TV adaption of Philip Pullman’s fantasy novel series His Dark Materials.
That’s it for this week, but join us next time when we round-up the TV news of that week.
