‘Altered Carbon’ Renewed For Season 2. Anthony Mackie Takes Over As Takeshi Kovacs
‘Altered Carbon‘ will return for a 2nd Season, but with a new lead actor, Netflix has announced.
Based on the classic cyberpunk noir novel by Richard K. Morgan, ‘Altered Carbon’ is an intriguing story of murder, love, sex, and betrayal, set more than 300 years in the future. Society has been transformed by new technology: consciousness can be digitized; human bodies are interchangeable; death is no longer permanent.
The “human bodies being interchangeable” is important to note, as that is what allows ‘Avengers’ movies star Anthony Mackie to step into the role of Takeshi Kovacs, played by Joel Kinnaman in Season 1. As you will remember, if you’ve seen the first season, people can be uploaded into a new body, known as “sleeves”. In fact, the Kinnaman-looking sleeve wasn’t actually Kovacs original form. The “OG Kovacs” was played during flashbacks in the show by ‘The Expanse’ star Byron Mann.
As the show is following the books, each of which takes place in wildly different locations, the original cast only had one-year contracts, so the change in lead actor had been somewhat expected. However, creator & exec producer Laeta Kalogridis has indicated we may see the return of Chris Conner (‘American Crime Story’) as the A.I. Edgar Poe, and Dichen Lachman (‘Dollhouse’, ‘The 100’, ‘AoS’) as Reileen Kawahara, Kovacs’ sister.
Behind the scenes, it was announced that Alison Schapker (‘The Flash’, ‘Fringe’, ‘Lost’) would be joining Kalogridis as co-showrunner and exec producer.
Netflix hasn’t announced an air date for the 8-episode ‘Altered Carbon‘ Season 2, but it won’t arrive until at least 2019 (possibly 2020). We’ll let you know when we hear more.
