Friday 27 July 2018

ALTERED CARBON renewed for a second season

After an unusual delay, Netflix have renewed their epic cyberpunk series Altered Carbon, based on the Takeshi Kovacs novels by Richard Morgan, for a second season. Avengers actor Anthony Mackie (who plays Falcon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) will play the lead role of Takeshi Kovacs, taking over from Joel Kinnaman.


The first season aired in February 2018 to mixed reviews (mostly from critics who'd only seen the first four episodes and fans baffled by apparently pointless and arbitrary plot changes) and apparently disappointing viewing figures, with the show garnering apparently only one-third the viewing figures of the considerably cheaper Lost in Space, released a few weeks later. It's possible that the show has picked up additional streamings after the initial release which have made a second season more attractive, which coupled with the casting of Mackie (with attending strong crossover marketing appeal to MCU fans) made the second season viable. Reviews also improved significantly once the entire series was available to view.

In an additional behind-the-scenes change, Alison Schapker (Alias, Fringe, The Flash, Scandal) will be working as writer and co-showrunner alongside Laeta Kalorgridis. Kalorgridis is also working on Netflix's Sword Art Online series, which explains the new division of labour.

It is unclear if the second season will be based on the second novel in the Kovacs trilogy, Broken Angels, which sees a re-sleeved Kovacs joining a mercenary army fighting on a colony planet. Early reports suggested that Kalorgridis was planning a five-season show which would mix original stories with adaptations of the three novels. More news as it comes in.

3 comments:

Mike said...

I really enjoyed the first season. It was entertaining but also explored some interesting ideas. It wasn't perfect but I'm very excited that it was renewed.

Anonymous said...

I thought s1 was great, so im verry glad that we are getting a second season.

alibaba said...

The first season was a poor adaptation at best - pointless character changes (making Kovacs a terrorist rather than a disavowed super-soldier and Quell becoming his lover), baffling in-universe logic (Kovacs sleeps for 250 years {not 10} yet walks outside the re-sleeving facility and functions normally in Earth society) but the most egregious change of all was having Kovacs solve the mystery at the end of the series in a room full of people like some 26th century Hercule Poirot, with supporting characters gasping as he reveals Bancrofts sordid plot...

I feel that AC fell victim to 'Netflix-itis' where IPs are forcibly moulded into a 10-hour series where a decently written 4-5 hours would suffice.