Showtime Cancels Sci-Fi Series After 1 Season

Showtime has canceled a critically successful sci-fi series after just one season. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the cable network has opted to forgo a second season of The Man Who Fell To Earth, which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Naomie Harris. Additional cast members include Clarke Peters, Bill Nighy, Jimmi Simpson, Kate Mulgrew, and Rob Delaney.

In a statement, a Showtime spokesperson told THR, “Our thanks to the extraordinary Alex Kurtzman, Jenny Lumet, John Hlavin and Sarah Timberman who did a great job of turning the David Bowie film into such a resonant tale for our times. And kudos to a wondrous cast led by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Naomie Harris and Bill Nighy for bringing it to life. Alex and Jenny originally intended The Man Who Fell To Earth to be a close-ended story. While we flirted with the idea of expanding it into a second season, we all ultimately decided to embrace it as a one season story well told.”

Notably, as Showtime’s statement points out, Kurtzman and Lumet had initially conceived The Man Who Fell to Earth as a limited series. However, THR reports that they altered their approach about halfway through the season, leaving room for the story to continue. Unfortunately for fans, that will no longer be happening.

The Man Who Fell to Earth is a loose adaptation of Walter Tevis’s 1963 novel of the same name and is a sequel to the 1976 David Bowie film, also titled The Man Who Fell to Earth. The series picks up 40-45 years after the original movie, with Ejiofor playing Faraday, an alien character who comes to Earth to find Thomas Jerome Newton (Bowie’s alien character in the original, now played by Bill Nighy) as well as a way to save his species.

Previously, PopCulture.com had a chance to chat with Ejiofor about the project and, when asked what drew him to the role, the actor said, “There were a lot of things really. It kind of starts, I think, for me with this really iconic film, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and David Bowie, and just what he brought to that. I remember seeing it when I was young and just being blown away by just how iconic he was, and just the energy that he gave, just sort of coming off the screen was just sort of amazing. And so it sort of was always in my imagination, in a way. Of the sort of iconic nature of that, of David Bowie’s persona in that.”