Penny Dreadful may have been a beloved, star-studded peak television offering that made its mark before proactively closing shop after just three seasons, but the classic-literature-crossover Showtime supernatural series will continue its legacy with a sequel series. The premium cable channel has just dropped major details about its upcoming follow-up series, Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels.
While the new series will make a dramatic shift away from the settings and characters covered in 2014-2016’s Penny Dreadful, it will have the support of its key personnel, namely creator John Logan, who returns to serve as writer and executive producer, joined in the latter capacity by Michael Aguilar, who’s worked on recent Showtime offerings Kidding and I’m Dying Up Here. – Here’s the official Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels poster:
Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels brandishes the initial tag line: “Sometimes what’s dead doesn’t always remain.” The show is described as a “spiritual descendant” of the original series, set to focus on an entirely new set of characters, moving the mythos chronologically ahead and a whole continent away from the previous show’s Victorian London setting to 1938 Los Angeles. There, the backdrop – teeming with social tension – will facilitate events rooted in Mexican-American aspects of supernatural folklore, with denizens who are in conflict over their respective focuses of worship, with some loyal to the deity, Santa Muerte, and others who worship the Devil. Consequently, the series is described as an amalgamation of the social realities of the setting and time period with themes centring on the occult.
As Gary Levine, President of Programming, Showtime Networks Inc., expresses in a statement:
“We were so thrilled when John Logan came to us with this wildly original take on the Penny Dreadful mythology that explores both the human spirit and the spirit world here in California.” He adds, “Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels promises to be an extraordinary saga of familial love set against the terrifying monsters that are around us and within us.”
While the original series balanced themes of magic and monsters with the economic desperation and soot-and-smog-strewn realities of Victorian London, City Of Angels will apparently exercise a balance of its own between socio-political and the supernatural. As creator John Logan explains:
“Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels will have a social consciousness and historical awareness that we chose not to explore in the Penny Dreadful London storylines,” Logan said. “We will now be grappling with specific historical and real world political, religious, social and racial issues. In 1938, Los Angeles was facing some hard questions about its future and its soul. Our characters must do the same. There are no easy answers. There are only powerful questions and arresting moral challenges. As always in the world of Penny Dreadful, there are no heroes or villains in this world, only protagonists and antagonists; complicated and conflicted characters living on the fulcrum of moral choice.”
Along with Logan and Aguilar, Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels will also see executive producers onboard in Oscar winner Sam Mendes (Skyfall, American Beauty) and Pippa Harris (Revolutionary Road) on behalf of Neal Street Productions. Logan is onboard via his Desert Wolf Productions. James Bagley is also onboard, serving as co-executive producer.
Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels is expected to go into production in 2019. We will keep you updated as the details arrive!