The Peripheral premiered on Prime Video last year and was ordered for a second season earlier this year, but Variety confirms that Amazon Studios has reversed their decision and has cancelled the series. According to one of the outlet’s sources, the decision was influenced by the ongoing writers’ and actors’ strikes, which are both impeding any development on the series. The outlet claims that, even were the strikes to end in the near future, the resources necessary to bring the sci-fi series to life mean that a Season 2 wouldn’t debut until 2025. It’s currently unknown if the series will aim to find a home at a different streamer.
The Peripheral centers on Flynne Fisher (Chloë Grace Moretz), a woman trying to hold together the pieces of her broken family in a forgotten corner of tomorrow’s America. Flynne is smart, ambitious, and doomed. She has no future; until the future comes calling for her. The Peripheral is master storyteller William Gibson’s dazzling, hallucinatory glimpse into the fate of mankind—and what lies beyond.
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The series also stars Jack Reynor (Midsommar), Gary Carr (The Deuce), Eli Goree (One Night in Miami), Louis Herthum (Westworld), JJ Feild (TURN: Washington’s Spies), T’Nia Miller (The Haunting of Bly Manor), Charlotte Riley (Peaky Blinders), Alexandra Billings (The Conners), Adelind Horan (The Deuce), Alex Hernandez (UnReal), Katie Leung (Chimerica), Julian Moore-Cook (Peaky Blinders), Melinda Page Hamilton (Messiah), Chris Coy (The Deuce), and Austin Rising (Alt).
The Peripheral is produced by Amazon Studios and Warner Bros Television, in association with Kilter Films. Executive producers for The Peripheral are creator and showrunner Scott B. Smith (A Simple Plan), director Vincenzo Natali (In the Tall Grass), Greg Plageman (Person of Interest), Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy (Westworld), Athena Wickham (Westworld), and Steven Hoban (In the Tall Grass).
This is only the latest blow to Nolan and Joy’s output, as Westworld was previously cancelled by HBO, despite the filmmakers aiming to deliver one final season.
Amazon Studios Head of Television Vernon Sanders previously shared that the series was earning promising numbers, thanks in large part to the excitement surrounding The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
“We are in talks about Season 2 as we speak. We were thrilled to see real engagement and a lot of crossover from The Lord of the Rings fans,” Sanders revealed to Collider last year. “So, it’s kind of what we were hoping, that we were getting a bunch of people into the service for that show, and that they would go on to watch our next show. They’re so different in tone, and obviously one’s fantasy and one’s sci-fi. We’re incredibly proud of the producers of The Peripheral. So I think there’ll be news on that in the not-too-distant future. We’re already hard at work on scripts for Season 2 and a plan for Season 2, so nothing to say officially right now, but we’re deep into it.”
Stay tuned for possible updates on the future of The Peripheral.
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