Like a lot of celebrities these days, Kurt Sutter has turned to social media while self-quarantining with his family. It’s there that he regularly fields questions in his Instagram stories from fans on a number of topics, namely his beloved biker drama, Sons of Anarchy.
On Tuesday, one fan asked him about his long-talked-about prequel series The First Nine, which would focus on the late John Teller and the other eight founding members of the motorcycle club. Unfortunately, Sutter doesn’t seem terribly optimistic about its future at this point, writing, “At this time, the prospects are not looking great. I don’t own the Sons of Anarchy IP, Fox/Disney does. But I never say never.”
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His outlook on the show hasn’t changed much since October when he sat down with Deadline.
“As of now, the possibility of doing that doesn’t look that hopeful,” Sutter explained at the time. “It’s their property. They’re not going to let me take it somewhere else. Right now, that relationship is in flux. With time and a shift in attitude, will we be able to do it? I don’t know. Hopefully. Maybe.”
Despite the unlikelihood of it getting made, the showrunner did go into some detail about what he had planned for the SoA prequel.
“I knew it wasn’t a long series, that I wanted to do a limited series,” Sutter continued. “Ideally, it was nine [or] ten episodes. The model I love is the Sherlock model. I love the idea of doing four two-hour episodes. The way I write, the episodes are way longer than they are supposed to be anyway. So that to me would have been ideal.”
Back in 2018, Sutter was able to return to his crime-and-bike-filled world with Mayans M.C., a spinoff set years after the conclusion of the flagship series, and focusing on the Sons’ sometimes-rival motorcycle club. While he’d planned on stepping down as co-showrunner and passing the reins to Elgin James, he was fired in October of last year.
While the chances of a First Nine series are slim, Sutter has cleared up a number of questions about Sons of Anarchy, including the meaning of the show’s mysterious homeless woman, and whether or not Jax (Charlie Hunnam) and Opie (Ryan Hurst) had to pledge as prospects to the club even though they had family members as ranking officers.
“Of course they had to prospect,” Sutter revealed. “I think it’s always harder on a prospect if they have family in the club.”
