Hulu Renews Stephen King Series ‘Castle Rock’ for Season 2

Hulu has announced that the Stephen King series Castle Rock has officially been renewed for a second season.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming service felt confident with the early renewal considering how many records it has already broken for them.

Castle Rock is currently Hulu‘s “most successful first-season original launch” in regards to streaming numbers and reach on its premiere date. The series also has the “highest view-through rates for a Hulu original in its first and second week” since it debuted.

The series is set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, and incorporates the literary universe of Stephen King. Many of King’s writings have been set in or around the small town, including The Dead Zone, Cujo, and Needful Things.

There is no word on when the second season will premiere, as the first season is still airing, but it seems plausible that the series could return around the same time.

Notably, the series is defined as having an anthology format so the curent season one stars — Andre Holland, Melanie Lynskey, Jane Levy, Bill Skarsgard, and Sissy Spacek —may not return for season two. That is unconfirmed at this time though.

While speaking to THR, Castle Rock co-showrunner Dustin Thomason clarified that “each season is going to be its own self-contained story: beginning, middle and end.”

“But I think that just as the books do, we want to surprise viewers with the ways in which the stories intersect,” Thomason added. “Just as the places the characters pop up in very unexpected ways throughout the books, that’s the kind of anthology that we would like to tell.

“One of the things about the King universe, or multiverse, is that some very strange things can happen when it comes to the ways that the stories unfold, and hopefully there will be surprises along the way in terms of how the anthology works in that way,” he continued.

“It’s pretty delicious that Kathy Bates played both Dolores Claiborne and Annie Wilkes, when you really think about that question in the movie adaptations,” Thomason also said. “But I think that there’s something for us about being faithful to the way that Steve does it in the books, that almost feels like the anthology format has already been laid out for us.”

The first six episodes of Castle Rock are now streaming on Hulu, with four more scheduled to air in season one.