‘The Outsider’: HBO Cancels the Stephen King Series!!

In a somewhat surprising move, HBO has decided to cancels the Stephen King series The Outsider. This despite the fact that work had already been underway for Season 2 this year in the wake of the show’s debut early in 2020.

The news comes via Deadline, who reports that MRC – the studio behind the show – will be shopping The Outsider Season 2 to other outlets after HBO passed on a second season. Richard Price, the show’s executive producer, put together a script and a bible for the show’s continuation, which would center around Cynthia Erivo’s character Holly (who’s a prominent character in multiple King books) as it “expands King’s universe, exploring the human, naturalistic and inexplicable with a sustained pervasive dread you can’t put your finger on.”

The Outsider Season 2 is being taken to premium networks and streamers, so it’ll be interesting to see where it lands (if it does). Netflix would seem a solid fit given that MRC produces Ozark, and Jason Bateman is an executive producer on The Outsider. He also directed the show’s first couple of episodes, which I think are the best thing he’s directed thus far.

The Outsider’s first season was a really creepy and dread-filled murder mystery as it followed Ben Mendelsohn as a detective who reluctantly teams up with Erivo’s Holly Gibney, a private eye with a special gift, to track down a potentially supernatural serial killer. It was filled with dread and tremendous performances, and while the show spun its wheels as bit as it went along, I do think it would benefit from binge-watching. Which is why I’m hopeful Season 2 happens somewhere like Netflix.

Stay tuned, folks. This may be the end of the road for The Outsider at HBO, but it may not be the end of the road for the series overall.

via Collider