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FX continues to focus on increasing its production output as it moves from being a basic cable network to a multiplatform brand, with its productions distributed both on the FX basic cable network as well as on the FX hub on Disney-owned Hulu, Star Plus in Latin America and Disney Plus in all other international territories, said FX Chairman John Landgraf at FX’s session at the Television Critics Association’s virtual press tour on Thursday.
“The idea that our brand will be distributed in a coordinated, strategic way, both domestically and globally, provides us the opportunity to expand our creative bounds and produce a diversity and depth of content programming that previously just didn’t exist,” Landgraf said. “And, again, the company is supporting a radically increased investment in FX and its output of original programming versus anything we were ever able to sustain as a basic cable brand.”
FX is preparing to premiere season five of Snowfall on Wednesday, February 23, which is attracting nine million viewers per episode, Landgraf said; and the final season of Pamela Adlon’s Better Things on Monday, February 28.
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FX also made several programming announcements on Thursday. Under the Banner of Heaven, based on Jon Krakauer’s New York Times-bestseller and starring Andrew Garfield, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sam Worthington, and six-episode limited series Pistol, about groundbreaking British punk band Sex Pistols, both premiere this spring.
This summer, long-awaited drama The Old Man – starring Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman and Alia Shawkat – premieres along with workplace half-hour comedy The Bear, about a young chef trained in fine-dining who has to come home and run his family’s sandwich shop.;
Later this year, FX has on tap limited series The Patient, starring Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson and created by The Americans’ Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg; FBI suspense thriller Class of ‘09, starring Atlanta’s and The Eternals’ Brian Tyree Henry and A Teacher’s Kate Mara;
and Welcome to Wrexham, a docuseries about the Wrexham Red Dragons football club, from Rob McElhenney (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Mythic Quest) and Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool, Free Guy), who bought the club in 2020.
Another docuseries, Dear Mama, about Afeni and Tupac Shakur, also debuts later this year.
In addition, Donald Glover’s Atlanta, the third season of which debuts in March, has been renewed for a fourth and final season, which will air this fall; Noah Hawley’s crime anthology series Fargo will return for a fifth season, but is not in production yet, and comedy Dave has been renewed for season three.
FX also has a number of projects in production, including Fleishman is in Trouble, based on the New York Times-bestseller by Taffy Brodesser Akner and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Lizzy Caplan and Claire Danes; limited series Shogun, based on James Clavell’s best-selling novel; sci-fi series Kindred, based on Octavia Butler’s influential novel; Alien, from Noah Hawley and Ridley Scott; drama Retreat, starring The Crown’s Emma Corrin and Clive Owen; Justified: City Primeval starring Timothy Olyphant; and two limited series from Ryan Murphy – Gladiator: American Sports Story, about the rise and fall of the New England Patriots’ Aaron Hernandez, and JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette: American Love Story.
FX also announced Thursday that it had cast Oscar and Emmy-winner Olivia Colman (The Crown, The Lost Daughter), Matt Berry (What We Do in the Shadows) and Fionn Whitehead (Dunkirk) in the FX/BBC co-production of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.