After a year that was largely dominated by talk of canceled shows and abandoned projects, Netflix was able to capitalize on some good news this week with the announcement of two major renewals.
In the past, Netflix tended to move quickly to renew shows if they were attracting a large audience on the streaming service. Bridgerton, for example, got renewals for a third and fourth season before the second even aired. This is why so many fans of Netflix’s debut drama Heartstopper were so concerned when it took a few weeks for its renewal to be confirmed. in the end, two more seasons were locked, so everything is fine, it turned out fine.
The first of Netflix’s renewals fits the streaming giant’s previous standards. The Lincoln Lawyer premiered just over a month ago and a second season of the show has already been confirmed.
LA’s best lawyer is back. The Lincoln Lawyer will return for season two on Netflix. pic.twitter.com/9VRKONBzmXJune 14, 2022
The Lincoln Lawyer is an adaptation of a series of novels by author Michael Connelly. Connelly, who is also the man behind Prime Video’s hit series Bosch, created the character of Mickey Haller, a defense attorney in Los Angeles who works in a chauffeured Lincoln Continental instead of an office.
The character was brought to the big screen in 2011 with Matthew McConaughey playing Haller. Although a modest success at the box office, a sequel was never made, with the character moving to TV instead of Netflix.
In the Netflix version of the character, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo plays Haller, with Neve Campbell, Becki Newton, Jazz Raycole, Angus Sampson and Christopher Gorham in supporting roles.
The show, which adapts Connelly’s 2008 novel The Brass Verdict, the sequel to The Lincoln Lawyer, was a big hit with Netflix subscribers. racking up over 230 million watch hours with four weeks in the streamer’s global Top 10 (opens in new tab). Renovation seemed like an easy decision.
Its second season will focus on Connelly’s novel The Fifth Witness, which is the fourth in Connelly’s series of novels focusing on Haller. Why is Netflix skipping the third book in the series, we hear you ask? Well, in the novels, Haller is the half-brother of Harry Bosch, another major creation of Connelly, and often acts as his attorney, as he does in Lincoln Lawyer’s third book, The Reversal.
With Bosch tied to Prime Video, a crossover isn’t happening anytime soon and you can imagine why Connelly and the creative team at Amazon don’t want anyone else playing Bosch…
So what’s the other renewal?
Sweet Home, the Korean drama, which Netflix has now renewed for a second and third season.
The drama, which is based on the webtoon Naver of the same name by Kim Carnby and Hwang Young-chan, follows Cha Hyun-soo, a high schooler who is forced to move to an apartment block after a family tragedy.
As soon as he puts his suitcase down, the apocalypse begins and legions of monsters begin trying to wipe out humanity. Trapped inside the building, Hyun-su and other residents try to turn the place into a fortress in hopes of surviving as long as they can.
The streaming giant took a long time to catch this, as the show’s first season dropped in late 2020. Sweet Home was actually the first South Korean series to break into Netflix’s Top 10 in the US, paving the way for the giant success of the Squid Game. It ended up making the Top 10 in 42 different countries.
In confirming the news, Netflix’s press release promised that “…in these new seasons, Sweet Home will be on a larger scale with an expanded storyline and cast.”
Lee Eung-bok, who oversaw the first season, will return for the second, and promised that the show’s second season “will be in a new setting.”
The Sweet Home renewal comes on the heels of official confirmation of a second season of Squid Game, as well as Netflix’s previous renewals of the zombie horror series All Of Us Are Dead and the Japanese fantasy series Alice in Borderland.
Netflix’s animated production may be contracting, but its expansion into Korean and Japanese fantasy drama continues apace.
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