Warning: Potential spoilers for Altered Carbon are below!
I get it, Netflix's new sci-fi series Altered Carbon has not even been out for a week and you haven't finished it yet. Normally not a problem. Kind of an issue, though, when the world moves on and a major casting decision could change everything.
That's essentially what's happened today, with the news from THR that Altered Carbon star Joel Kinnaman has signed on to join his old The Killing co-star Mireille Enos in Amazon's adaptation of Hanna. Amazon picked up Hanna to series last May, and it will star newcomer Esme Creed-Miles in the role originally played by Saoirse Ronan in the film.
Kinnaman's deal with Netflix for their sci-fi series was reportedly for one year, and the man's gotta eat! Plus, the crux of Altered Carbon is about changing "sleeves" (bodies), like how Kinnaman's character Takeshi Kovacs started off (and is shown in flashbacks) as Will Yun Lee, who took on the sleeve of a framed police officer in the hopes of continuing his quest to catch a killer.
In the Richard K. Morgan novels on which the series is based, Kovacs inhabits a variety of different sleeves/bodies of different ethnicities over time. So while Netflix has not yet renewed the series, Kinnaman told TV Guide recently that Season 2 was always unlikely to feature him:
"We have no idea what the second season would be, but my guess is that they would follow the two other books, and they are all on completely different planets, completely different worlds, and my guess is — and I don't know — my guess is that it's sort of going to be an anthology show where maybe a couple of the characters continue into the next season. But no one knows what's going on in the second season."
So if you are reading this and were hoping for more Kinnaman in Season 2, well, don't get too attached!
Meanwhile, the Hanna series will be penned by David Farr, who co-wrote the original movie and also adapted John Le Carre’s excellent The Night Manager miniseries for AMC. In a statement about his new series, Farr said that:
"I'm thrilled that Hanna has managed to attract a visionary director and actors of the calibre of Mireille and Joel to play our adult leads. And in Esme Creed-Miles I believe we have discovered a star of the future – she is going to be a very special Hanna. Hanna aims to be both a raw-knuckle ride and a deeply touching family drama. It has the visceral excitement of a genuine conspiracy thriller but also the simple humanity of a rites of passage drama. Hanna is in a very unusual family. She's a very special teenager. But all teenagers think they're abnormal. She's just a little more abnormal than most."
