‘Gossip Girl’ Renewed For Season 2 By HBO Max

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The rebooted ‘Gossip Girl‘ series will be back for a 2nd Season after HBO Max announced the drama was their most-watched original series over its opening weekend.

For those of you unfamiliar with the ‘Gossip Girl’ phenomenon, the original drama was created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, based on the books by Cecily von Ziegesar. The story revolved around a group of privileged teens living on the Upper East Side of New York, who could hide no secret from the omniscient blogger, “Gossip Girl”, who was always watching.

The new 10-episode 2021 version is set eight years after the original website went dark, as a new generation of New York private school teens are introduced to the social surveillance of “Gossip Girl”. Developed by showrunner Joshua Safran, a writer and executive producer on the original series, this extension of the pop culture classic explores just how much social media – and the landscape of New York itself – has changed in the intervening years.

The 2021 series stars Jordan Alexander, Eli Brown, Thomas Doherty, Tavi Gevinson, Emily Alyn Lind, Evan Mock, Zion Moreno, Whitney Peak and Savannah Lee Smith.

The renewal shouldn’t come as a huge shock given the numbers the drama has been landing for HBO Max who commissioned it. Along with being the most-watched original series over its first weekend, the series also topped their viewership records for its first four days of availability on the streamer. The first 6 episodes have been released so far, with the back half of the season due to drop in November in USA.

‘Gossip Girl’ is produced by Fake Empire and Alloy Entertainment in association with Warner Bros. Television and CBS Studios, and was acquired by BBC Programme Acquisition. The series is written, executive produced and developed by Joshua Safran of Random Acts. Executive producers also include Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage of Fake Empire, and Leslie Morgenstein and Gina Girolamo of Alloy Entertainment. Lis Rowinski of Fake Empire serves as co-executive producer. Karena Evans directs two episodes and original costume designer Eric Daman rejoins the series.

Both ‘Gossip Girl – The Original Series‘ and ‘Gossip Girl’ (2021) can be found on BBC iPlayer in the UK.