Manifest Creator Wants to Wrap Up Series With a Movie

NBC may have cancelled Manifest after just three seasons, but the campaign to keep the story going is continuing to gain steam. The first two seasons of the series were recently added to Netflix and have been one of the most-watched titles on the streaming service since. Jeff Rake, Manifest's creator, has been working to find a new home for Manifest so it can finish its story, but he's also working on a backup plan if no network or service wants to make additional seasons.

Rake had initially planned for Manifest to be a six-season series. However, if that isn't possible, he still wants to finish the story and resolve the cliffhangers from the end of Season 3. During a recent interview with EW, Rake revealed that he has been working on a feature film that could bring Manifest to a close.

"Twenty days after we've premiered on Netflix, I've kind of moved away from the plan of finding a home for seasons 4, 5, and 6 of Manifest, even though I've always talked about Manifest being a six-season show," Rake explained. "Back in the day, I laid out a six-season roadmap for NBC, and I'm halfway through. I had giant cliffhangers in the season 3 finale, so I had every intention to have three more seasons to slow-burn the back half of the story. I'm reading the writing on the wall that we may not find a home for three more seasons of the show, so I moved to plan B: Some platform would bankroll a feature or a movie finale, like we saw with Timeless, Firefly, and Deadwood. I just need a modest budget to tell the story. I am personally sketching out how to consolidate the back half of the series into a much more streamlined, cut-to-the-chase two-hour finale that would distill all of the hanging chads of the series. That's where my head is at. There is a huge appetite for people wanting to know what's that end of the story, what happened to the passengers, what ultimately happened to that airplane."

One way or another, it seems like Manifest fans are going to get a conclusion to the beloved mystery series. Hopefully, a network or streaming service will pick the series up for more seasons, but there will at least be a movie to wrap things up if nothing else pans out.

Are you hoping to see the rest of Manifest's story? Let us know in the comments!