Now Apocalypse season 2 was written before Starz pulled the plug
Gregg Araki says Starz had paid the cast and begun prep before a leadership shake-up stopped the erotic sci-fi series.
By Poppy Nakagawa · Culture Writer
3 min read
Now Apocalypse season 2 got much closer to happening than fans knew: Gregg Araki told Deadline the follow-up to his Starz series had already been written, with the cast paid to return, before changes at the network stopped the plan.
Araki discussed the scrapped second season while speaking with Deadline about his new film I Want Your Sex, which Deadline said is set to open in theaters Friday, July 31. The filmmaker, a major figure in New Queer Cinema, co-created Now Apocalypse with Karley Sciortino.
According to Araki, the show was past the wish-list stage. He told Deadline that the second season scripts existed, the actors had been paid, and the team was preparing to make the next run when the situation at Starz changed.
What happened to Now Apocalypse season 2?
Araki said the plan fell apart after the executive working with the series was fired and the network changed direction. He described the twist to Deadline as an eerie case of the show anticipating its own fate, calling it “so prophetic.”
The reason, he said, was baked into the story the writers had already built for season 2. In that version, Carly, played by Kelli Berglund, was paid to develop a TV project and worked with a development executive. By episode 9, Araki said, that executive was fired and Carly’s show was put into turnaround.
Araki told Deadline that the same chain of events then happened to Now Apocalypse itself: their executive was fired and the broader network changed. In his account, the fictional TV-industry nightmare became the real one.
In Araki’s description, “turnaround” meant Carly’s project was no longer advancing as planned after the executive backing it was gone. For Now Apocalypse, the behind-the-scenes shake-up meant the already-written season never reached production.
What was Now Apocalypse about?
Now Apocalypse starred Avan Jogia as Ulysses, a disenchanted young man in Los Angeles dealing with love, sex and fame among his friends while experiencing visions tied to the end of the world. Kelli Berglund co-starred as Carly.
Araki directed every episode of the series. Deadline reported that Sciortino, known for her work as a Vogue.com sex columnist, co-wrote the show with him.
The first season ran for 10 episodes on Starz from March to May 2019. Steven Soderbergh and Gregory Jacobs served as executive producers, with the series made under Soderbergh’s Starz deal, according to Deadline.
Starz canceled Now Apocalypse in July 2019 after one season. At the time, Starz COO Jeff Hirsch described the series as “a great show” and “a great experiment for us,” according to Deadline.
Araki’s new comments fill in what happened before that cancellation became final: season 2 was not a vague possibility, by his telling. It was written, paid for at the cast level, and moving toward production before the network reset cut it off.
This story draws on original reporting from Deadline.