Season two of “The Knick” ended with a dramatic cliffhanger — leaving the main character, Dr. John Thackery (Clive Owen), seemingly dead on the operating table.
Now, executive producer Steven Soderbergh tells Variety exclusively he’s actively exploring the show’s future with the show’s writers.
“It was always conceived in two-year chunks,” he says. “The writers met yesterday to talk about what year three and four would look like — when would it take place, who are the characters. We always imagined every two years we would annihilate what came before and start over. And that’s what we’re doing now.”
Soderbergh says he wants the show to continue, and that the network is waiting to hear his plans for the future. “I would like to keep going. I always thought of it as a six-year thing if we were allowed to continue. I hope we can figure it out. I hope we come up with something that I look at it and go, OK, I want to spend another two years of my life on that. Because that’s really the question. It’s an intense experience — rewarding, but I want to make sure we want to keep the bar at the same height or higher.”
As for the show’s star, Clive Owen, Soderbergh says the door is open on his potential return to his show as well. “I don’t know yet,” says Soderbergh. “There’s been a lot of discussion about if we switch time periods can we still bring back the cast but have them play other people. Everything’s on the table.”
This fall “The Knick,” averaged about 450,000 in Nielsen’s “live plus-3” estimates.
