More details today about that Sons of Anarchy spinoff that show creator Kurt Sutter has teased fans with for the past 18 months. Sutter first mentioned the idea of expanding the Anarchy universe in 2013 as the show’s final season was in production. Months later he told a rapt crowd at San Diego Comic-Con that a prequel was more likely than a spinoff. “We are having serious conversations about a prequel,” he said before explaining that he thinks spinoffs work best for procedural dramas. He added that he’d like to let the mythology rest for a couple years before coming back to explore origin stories.
With filming for his new FX show – medieval drama The Bastard Executioner – taking place in Ireland, Sutter has seemed too busy to attack any SoA follow-up but it’s obviously been on his mind. Today EW confirmed with Sutter that he is developing a new show for FX focused on the Mayans Motorcycle Club, an Oakland based gang and a prominent player throughout the Sons of Anarchy storyline. He did not discuss any possible character or timeline crossovers, or confirm whether this will be a standalone series. Sutter will serve as executive producer and is currently looking for a showrunner to oversee the series. He did indicate that the sooner a writer is found, the sooner production could launch.
FX and Sutter have a long and successful relationship. Anarchy was FX’s most popular series to-date, averaging 7.5 million viewers even after seven seasons. Expectations are high for The Bastard Executioner; trailers show that Sutter is hanging on to his trademark gritty style and onscreen violence, while digging in to his love of history. (Even while Sons of Anarchy was on the air he created the docuseries Outlaw Empires as a side project for Discovery, examining the stories of real-life gangs like the Irish Mob and Crips.) Earlier this summer Sutter answered a reporter’s question about onscreen violence, “There are ways to portray that violence that don’t make it openly gratuitous, so I sort have the same mandate with this show. Anything that happens, be it battle sequences of an execution or a torture scene, it comes out of story, and once we see the characters’ conflict or, as importantly, their non-conflict in carrying forth that violence, it always has some ramification.”
Right now he’s pleased to keep both his style and his scripted series deal with FX, as he told The Hollywood Reporter, “I love working with FX and Fox21TVS. They’ve been my family for 15 years. They not only tolerate me, they embrace my extremely disturbing storytelling sensibilities.”