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Hulu is going back to the land of Stephen King.
The streamer has handed out an early second-season renewal for Castle Rock. The news arrives as episode six (of 10) in the J.J. Abrams-produced anthology is set to bow Wednesday.
According to Hulu, Castle Rock became the most successful first-season original launch in terms of consumption and reach on the day of its July 25 premiere. The series also has the highest view-through rates for a Hulu original in its first and second week since its launch, the streamer says.
A timetable for Castle Rock‘s return, as well as an episode count and details on which castmembers will be returning for season two, have yet to be determined. Sources say season two could feature an entirely new cast. Andre Holland, Melanie Lynskey, Bill Skarsgard, Jane Levy and Sissy Spacek star in season one.
The psychological-horror drama is set in the King multiverse in Maine. King executive produces the series alongside Abrams and his Bad Robot topper Ben Stephenson. The drama hails from Warner Bros. Television, which also produced Hulu’s other Abrams/King team-up, the limited series 11.22.63. Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason developed the project for TV and serve as showrunners and exec producers. They will return for season two.
“Each season is going to be its own self-contained story: beginning, middle and end,” Thomason told The Hollywood Reporter. “But I think that just as the books do, we want to surprise viewers with the ways in which the stories intersect. Just as the places the characters pop up in very unexpected ways throughout the books, that’s the kind of anthology that we would like to tell. One of the things about the King universe, or multiverse, is that some very strange things can happen when it comes to the ways that the stories unfold, and hopefully there will be surprises along the way in terms of how the anthology works in that way. It’s pretty delicious that Kathy Bates played both Dolores Claiborne and Annie Wilkes, when you really think about that question in the movie adaptations. But I think that there’s something for us about being faithful to the way that Steve does it in the books, that almost feels like the anthology format has already been laid out for us.”
Castle Rock is part of a Hulu scripted originals slate that includes The Handmaid’s Tale, Runaways, Catch-22, Shrill, The Looming Tower, The First, Into the Dark and Little Fires Everywhere, among others.
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