Ahead of its second season premiere, TNT has renewed “Snowpiercer” for a third season.
The drama, adapted from Bong Joon Ho’s 2013 movie, returns on Monday, Jan. 25.
“Snowpiercer” debuted last year as the top new cable entertainment program in May with 3.3 million total viewers across TNT and TBS. It was also the top new cable drama series of 2020.
The series stars Jennifer Connelly, Daveed Diggs, Sean Bean, Rowan Blanchard, Alison Wright, Mickey Sumner, Iddo Goldberg, Katie McGuinness, Lena Hall, Annalise Basso, Sam Otto, Roberto Urbina, Sheila Vand and Steven Ogg. Season 2 will see the train working to maintain a “fragile peace” after the first season, which is threatened by the introduction of Wilford’s rival train.
“Snowpiercer” is executive produced by Graeme Manson, Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements; Matthew O’Connor, Ben Rosenblatt and Scott Derrickson; along with CJ Entertainment and the original film’s producers, Bong Joon Ho, Miky Lee, Tae-sung Jeong, Park Chan-wook, Lee Tae-hun and Dooho Choi. Christoph Schrewe is a co-executive producer. The series is produced by Tomorrow Studios.
The series had a very fraught development cycle, which featured more than a few derailments in what was a five-year process to get to the screen. In 2015, TNT put a TV adaptation into development that swapped Diggs and Connelly into the main roles. But there were problems from the outset: The series’ first showrunner, Josh Friedman — who is best known for helming “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” and co-writing “War of the Worlds” — was fired over “creative differences” when TNT greenlit the series in 2018.
Friedman was replaced by “Orphan Black” co-creator Graeme Manson, who started the series from scratch, prompting an angered Friedman to denounce Manson as a “vichy motherf—.” Manson has since described it as a “brand new pilot, rewritten completely.” Once Friedman was replaced, director Scott Derrickson followed him out the door after complaining about Manson’s “radically different vision” compared to the pilot he shot for Friedman. Veteran TV director James Hawes came in for the reshoots.