TV News Wrap-Up: Netflix Orders ‘Resident Evil’ Series, Fox Developing ‘The X-Files’ Animated Comedy Series, ‘Altered Carbon’ Canceled By Netflix

Hollywood has been shut down since March, but it looks like we’re starting to see the beginning of new content on the horizon.

It also isn’t stopping networks from ordering new content and casting actors for projects in development. 

Check out some of the highlights in this week’s TV news wrap-up. 

—

Kiera Knightley is headed to Apple TV+ as executive producer and star of The Essex Serpent. 

• According to Deadline, it hails from See-Saw Films, the company behind The King’s Speech and Top of the Lake. 
• Knightley will play newly-widowed Cora who “having [been] released from an abusive marriage, relocates from Victorian London to the small village of Aldwinter in Essex, intrigued by a local superstition that a mythical creature known as the Essex Serpent has returned to the area.”

Jordan Alexander joins the HBO Max Gossip Girl reboot. 

• A Deadline exclusive reports that the Canadian singer-actress has joined the series.
• This iteration of the series takes place 8 years after the original website went dark, and follows “a new generation of New York private school teens is introduced to the social surveillance of Gossip Girl.“
• No details on Alexander’s character have been released but it is believed that she will be one of the girls at the school. 
• She will join her fellow leads, Emily Alyn Lind, Tavi Gevinson, Whitney Peak, Eli Brown, Johnathan Fernandez, and Jason Gotay as well as Thomas Doherty, Adam Chanler-Berat, Savannah Smith and Zion Moreno.

Fox is developing an animated comedy spinoff of The X-Files.

• The project is entitled The X-Files: Albuquerque and follows a series of misfit agents who handle the cases too wacky for Mulder and Scully to even bother with. 
• The series will be penned by Rocky Russo and Jeremy Sosenko, writers on Netflix’s animated comedy Paradise PD and Comedy Central’s Brickleberry.
• According to Deadline, “The network has committed to a script and presentation with The X-Files creator Chris Carter and Gabe Rotter on board to exec produce.

NBC has announced premiere dates for several of its fall shows. 

• Superstore will be returning on October 12th.
• This Is Us will be making its return on November 10th with a two-hour premiere event.
• Chicago P.D, Chicago Fire, and Chicago Med, will all be back with new episodes on November 11th.
• Law and Order: SVU will enter Season 22 on November 12th.
• The Blacklist will return on November 13th.
• For more premiere dates and to see the complete schedule from NBC, click here. 

Two actors have been announced for Netflix’s Maid. 

• Deadline reports that Margaret Qualley will headline the series inspired by Stephanie Land’s bestselling memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive.
• Qualley will play Alex, “a single mother who turns to housekeeping to — barely — make ends meet as she battles against poverty, homelessness, and bureaucracy.”
• Another Deadline exclusive reports that Nick Robinson has also been cast in the series playing the male lead, opposite Qualley.
• Qualley and Robinson previously starred in the HBO film Native Son which premiered last year at Sundance. 

FBI adds Katherine Renee Turner to cast; spinoff gets new showrunner. 

• Turner has joined the mothership series as a new series regular; she is a 2020 Julliard graduate. 
• Deadline reports, “Turner will play Tiffany Wallace, an outspoken, “best and brightest” who was raised in Bed Stuy. She spent six years with the NYPD, mostly narcotics and fell in love with being a Fed after working on a joint task force but is still a bit of an outlier at 26 Fed.”
• On FBI: Most Wanted, David Hudgins has been named as the new showrunner following the exit of long-time Wolf collaborator René Balcer. 

Altered Carbon has been canceled by Netflix after two seasons. 

• The second season of Altered Carbon premiered on February 27th and starred Anthony Mackie, and an animated movie was launched on March 19th. 
• A Deadline article reporting the cancellation speculates, “I hear Netflix’s decision not to proceed with further seasons was made in April and is not COVID-related but stems from the streamer’s standard viewership vs. cost renewal review process.”

Netflix has renewed its German original series Biohackers for a second season. 

• The series premiered on August 20th and tells the story of revolutionary biohacking technology and intrigue at a German university, following a mysterious student played by Luna Welder.
• A Deadline exclusive reports that filming on Season 2 will start in the coming months in Freiburg and Munich.
• The series was created by Christian Ditter who serves as writer, director, and showrunner for the series. His previous credits include the movies How to Be Single and Love, Rosie, and the Netflix original Girlboss.
• “It’s great that Biohackers will continue. Thematically, the second season will also deal with moral and ethical issues around biohacking and genome editing,” said Ditter.

Resident Evil series from Supernatural EP gets the green light at Netflix.

• The streamer gave the series an 8-episode order and will be inspired by Capcom’s popular survival horror series. 
• According to Deadline, the series will feature a new storyline across two timelines. It will be penned by Supernatural executive producer and co-showrunner Andrew Dabb.
• In the first timeline, “fourteen-year-old sisters Jade and Billie Wesker are moved to New Raccoon City. A manufactured, corporate town, forced on them right as adolescence is in full swing. But the more time they spend there, the more they come to realize that the town is more than it seems and their father may be concealing dark secrets. Secrets that could destroy the world.”
• The second timeline will follow a thirty-year-old Jade who is trying to survive in a new world where there are 15 million people left and 6 billion monsters. 
• The series will continue to incorporate the signature elements that the franchise is known for such as action sequences and easter eggs. Dabb also hinted that there will be new monsters and appearances of beloved characters. 
• “For every type of Resident Evil fan, including those joining us for the first time, the series will be complete with a lot of old friends, and some things (bloodthirsty, insane things) people have never seen before,” said Dabb.

—

What is your favorite piece of TV news from this week? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. 

 Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!

10 TV Angels We Love To Death (And 6 We Absolutely Hate)