It has been a year since Atlanta premiered on FX to rave reviews, and things have only gotten better for the show since then. Created, starring and partly written and directed by Donald Glover, it has picked by dozens of nominations and awards during this time, and there is a huge clamor for Atlanta season 2.
However, even though FX greenlit “Atlanta” season 2 within two weeks of the show’s premiere in September 2016, we unfortunately won’t get to see it until 2018 at the earliest. That’s because “Atlanta” has actually been a victim of its own success. First of all, Donald Glover has been rather busy shooting the still untitled Han Solo movie, and his voice role as Simba in “The Lion King” to actually start work on the second season of “Atlanta.”
It’s not just in front of the camera that Donald Glover has been rather busy. Behind the scenes Glover has also been developing an animated series based on “Deadpool” for FXX, which he will work on as a showrunner, executive producer and writer.
Glover isn’t the only one that has seen their popularity increase as a result of “Atlanta.” Lakeith Stanfield has shone in the likes of “Get Out,” “Death Note,” “Crown Heights,” “War Machine” and “The Incredible Jessica James” in recent months; Zazie Beetz will be Domino in “Deadpool 2;” and Brian Tyree Henry has shone in “Vice Principals,” “This Is Us” and he has a number of film roles lined up, too.
But despite the hectic schedules of its ensemble, “Atlanta” season 2 will actually start shooting at some point this month, which suggests that it is on course for a summer 2018 release. “Atlanta’s” all-black writers room has already finished the scripts for season 2, and here’s what else we know.
Donald Glover has set the bar extremely high
All that Donald Glover would say about the new episodes during a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter was that it needed to be “better” than the last, adding, “I don’t want to go into season two [with the mindset of] ‘Enough people liked it so just keep those people.’ Because then you begin to give your audience a methadone drip of bulls**t that keeps them happy as opposed to, ‘We did something controversial and more people were interested.’ “
The city of Atlanta will play a much larger part
Stephen Glover, who works alongside his brother on “Atlanta,” was a little more open with their plans, insisting that the second season will expand the world of Atlanta, and make the city much more of a character.
“I think what’s important with Season 2 is making sure that people understand how it feels to live in the city of Atlanta,” Glover explained to Indiewire. “It’s a very unique experience in the south, which is a super-racist place, but at the same time it’s one of the blackest places in the world probably in terms of African-American. That culture is drenched all over it. There’s so many layers to the life that people are living there, even down to rap music. You can find all of the things that you hear people rap about in Atlanta. That life is really there. There’s really tragedy and triumph in this city that’s so specific though. I think with Season 2 that’s the big goal, to get people to feel that.”
Food is somehow involved. We think
Back in October, 2016, Glover’s tease to AdWeek about Atlanta season 2 wasn’t just infuriatingly vague and unfairly tantalizing, but somehow also made us hungry. “I don’t want to sit there and be like, ‘Oh, I don’t care what the audience thinks.’ It does matter to me. I just want them to think, to be honest. I want them to think about it. I think Season 2 will be affected by how people take in the food we’re giving them, essentially. I don’t know what that means, but I want to see how it all fits with them. Because I think that’s part of our making art is that we’re in this together. It’s a dance, really.”
It’s still impossible to know exactly what that means, but Donald Glover clearly has hit sights set on taking “Atlanta” to another echelon in its second season. Considering how hugely popular the show, and pretty much everything else that Glover has touched, has been so far, no-one will bet against him reaching these great heights.
