The Showtime original series Black Monday, dark comedy about the financial industry in the late 1980’s, has just been renewed for a third season of ten episodes, Variety reports. The season two finale “I Don’t Like Mondays” aired in July. The season three premiere is scheduled to arrive on Showtime in the second half of 2021, as reported by Variety. Series lead and co-executive producer Don Cheadle (Traffic, House of Lies), who plays veteran stock trader Maurice “Mo” Monroe, confirmed the renewal via Twitter.
Black Monday‘s creators Jordan Cahan (My Best Friend’s Girl) and David Caspe (Happy Endings, Marry Me) spoke to TV Guide over the summer about the possibility of leaving the 1980’s behind altogether in Season 3: “It’s almost ’89 by the end of Season 2, so there’s something interesting about 1990, or even jumping ahead.” When Cheadle, Cahan and Caspe were interviewed for the podcast Hollywood Unscripted, Caspe discussed that his inspiration for the series initially came from the worldwide recession of the late 2000’s, especially the climactic bankruptcy of the long-running Lehman Brothers firm: “We started writing this a little after that ’08 crash and Lehman Brothers went under, which was so crazy, so we just thought, like, ‘Wouldn’t that be funny, if the two villains in the show are the Lehman brothers,’ the actual brothers… It’s divorced from reality a little bit, but we always… imagined that the whole series would end in ’08… But who knows?”
Regina Hall (Love & Basketball, Support the Girls), who portrays the calculating Dawn Darcy, talked to Interview Magazine about her main takeaway from Black Monday‘s time period of choice: “Even though we’re doing it very comedically, it’s like, ‘Gosh, this is snapshot of the 80’s,’ which isn’t that long ago. We were so unkind to people. There was this disregard.” During the Hollywood Unscripted conversation, Cahan and Caspe imparted that the excesses of the 1980’s have been a way for them to demonstrate what they perceive as a lack of present-day progress in the realm of prejudice: “Despite the 80’s being years and years ago, it still feels like all of these issues are still bubbling to the surface.” In a Gold Derby interview, Cheadle explained his own feelings about why it feels necessary to compare the 1980’s with the contemporary era: “We’re dipping our toe into all of these issues with sexual identity and race and feminism and… the classist systems that we’re dealing with… Having that perspective of 40 years… is the thing that helps us to shine a light on how far we haven’t come sometimes.”
The first two seasons of Black Monday are currently available to watch through Showtime’s streaming service.