AMC has announced that it has renewed the critically acclaimed anthology series The Terror for a second season.
The next iteration of the show will be set during World War II and centre on an uncanny specter that menaces a Japanese-American community from its home in Southern California to the internment camps to the war in the Pacific. Alexander Woo (True Blood) and Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island) are executive producing, with Woo serving as showrunner.
“The Terror has given us the opportunity to take a unique approach to the anthology format. We loved the concept of beginning with an actual historical event and overlaying it with a fictional horror element, and we are immensely proud of this show’s combination of cinematic scope and intimate character work. We are thrilled to announce a second season and dramatize one of the most chilling and important events of the 20th Century, guided by the vision of the gifted Alexander Woo and Max Borenstein,” said David Madden, president of original programming for AMC, SundanceTV and AMC Studios. “Our deep appreciation goes to the persistently creative and passionate showrunning team of David Kajganich and Soo Hugh, the incomparable Ridley Scott and the rest of the producing team, and the outstanding cast led by Jared Harris for launching this concept and leaving us on the precipice of terrifying new adventures as we continue with the next chapter of The Terror.”
“I’m deeply honored to be telling a story set in this extraordinary period,” said Woo. “We hope to convey the abject terror of the historical experience in a way that feels modern and relevant to the present moment. And the prospect of doing so with a majority Asian and Asian-American cast is both thrilling and humbling.”
“As a history-buff and genre geek (not to mention a conscious American today), it’s clear that truth is always scarier than fiction,” said Borenstein. “This season of The Terror uses as its setting one of the darkest, most horrific moments in our nation’s history. The Japanese-American internment is a blemish on the nation’s conscience — and one with dire resonance to current events. I’m thrilled that AMC is giving us the chance to use that darkness as the inspiration for what I hope will be a trenchant, terrifying season of TV.”
The first season of The Terror was inspired by a true story about the Royal Navy’s perilous voyage in 1847 while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage. Frozen, isolated and stuck at the end of the earth, The Terror season one highlighted all that can go wrong when a group of men, desperate to survive, struggle not only with the elements but with each other.
