The next installment of Penny Dreadful has been announced, with Paco Cabezas (Penny Dreadful, The Alienist) directing. Showtime’s Penny Dreadful: City of Angels will be in production later this year and will continue to be written and executive produced by the series’s Oscar-nominated creator John Logan.
Cabezas previously directed several episodes of the third season of the series, as well as episodes of Fear The Walking Dead and American Gods. He additionally directed and executive produced some of Into the Badlands. In the film world, Cabezas wrote and directed several works, such as The Appeared, a horror film, and Sexykiller, a horror comedy. Mr. Right, his newest feature film, premiered in 2015 and stars Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick.
In the original Penny Dreadful, iconic literary characters, such as Dracula, Dorian Gray, and Frankenstein and his monster, were included. While the original series was set in Victorian London, the next one will focus on Los Angeles in 1938, during tumultuous times. With such historic incidents as the building of the first freeways in LA to the now deeply embedded Mexican-American folklore, the story will intertwine reality and fiction. Other topics such as the Third Reich and radio evangelists will also be explored as a detective attempts to solve a gruesome murder shaking the city. LA’s history and mystery will both be uncovered in this season, stirring up a mixture of the occult and morality amidst the grounded historical background.
Concerning the new series, Logan told reporters: “‘Penny Dreadful: City of Angels’ will have a social consciousness and historical awareness that we chose not to explore in the ‘Penny Dreadful’ London storylines. We will now be grappling with specific historical and real world political, religious, social and racial issues. In 1938, Los Angeles was facing some hard questions about its future and its soul. Our characters must do the same. There are no easy answers. There are only powerful questions and arresting moral challenges. As always in the world of ‘Penny Dreadful,’ there are no heroes or villains in this world, only protagonists and antagonists; complicated and conflicted characters living on the fulcrum of moral choice.”
Along with John Logan, the show will be produced by Oscar-winning producer Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Skyfall) and Pippa Harris (Revolutionary Road) from Neal Street Productions, as well as Michael Aguilar (Kidding). The series will be produced by John Logan’s company Desert Wolf Productions with James Bagley co-executive producing.