After a year that has been largely dominated by talk of canceled shows and abandoned projects, Netflix has been able to enjoy some good news this week with the announcement of two major renewals.
In the past, Netflix has tended to act quickly to renew shows if they're attracting a large audience on the streaming service. Bridgerton, for example, scored renewals for a third and fourth season before the second had even aired. That was why so many fans of Netflix's breakout 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 in, so all is well that's ends well.
The first of Netflix's renewals fits with the streaming giant's past patterns. The Lincoln Lawyer debuted just over a month ago and a second season of the show has now been confirmed.
LA’s finest lawyer is back. The Lincoln Lawyer will return for Season 2 on Netflix. pic.twitter.com/9VRKONBzmXJune 14, 2022
The Lincoln Lawyer is an adaptation of a series of novels from 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 out of a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Continental rather than an office.
The character was taken to the big screen in 2011 with Matthew McConaughey, playing Haller. Though a modest hit at the box office, a sequel was never made, with the character shifting to TV instead with Netflix.
In Netflix's take on 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, has been a big hit with Netflix subscribers, racking over 230 million viewing hours with four weeks in the streamer's global Top 10. A renewal seemed to be 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 are Netflix skipping the third book in the series, we hear you ask? Well, in the novels, Haller is the half-brother of Harry Bosch, Connelly's other key creation, and often acts as his lawyer, as he does in the third Lincoln Lawyer book, The Reversal.
With Bosch being tied up with Prime Video, a crossover isn't going to happen anytime soon and you can imagine why Connelly and Amazon's creative team don't want somebody 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 Naver webtoon of the same name by Kim Carnby and Hwang Young-chan, follows Cha Hyun-soo, a high-schooler who is forced to relocate to an apartment block after a family tragedy.
No sooner has he put his suitcase down than the apocalypse begins and legions of monsters start trying to wipe out humanity. Trapped inside the building, Hyun-su and other residents try to make the place a fortress in the hope of surviving for as long as they can.
It has taken the streaming giant a long time to lock this in, given the show's first season dropped at the end of 2020. Sweet Home was actually the first South Korean series to enter Netflix's Top 10 in the United States, paving the way for the giant success of 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 take on a larger scale with an expanded storyline and cast."
Lee Eung-bok, who oversaw the first run, will return for the second, and has promised that the show's second season will "be in a new setting."
Sweet Home's renewal comes hot on the heels of the official confirmation of a second season of Squid Game, as well as Netflix's previous renewals of zombie horror series All Of Us Are Dead and Japanese fantasy series Alice in Borderland.
Netflix's animated output might be contracting, but its expansion into Korean and Japanese fantastical drama continues apace.
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