AMC Renews The Terror

AMC has ordered a second season of its debut anthology series, The Terror, which is executive produced by Ridley Scott.

From Scott Free, Emjag Productions and Entertainment 360, season two of the AMC Studios production will be set during World War II, focusing on a Japanese-American community haunted by an uncanny specter from its home in Southern California to the internment camps to the war in the Pacific. Alexander Woo and Max Borenstein co-created the ten-episode second season and will executive produce. Woo, who has an overall deal at AMC, has also been tapped as showrunner. The show is slated to return in 2019 on AMC in the U.S. and globally. It will also air on Amazon Prime Video in select territories.

The Terror has done well for AMC, ranking as the number two new cable drama this season and a top ten drama on ad-supported cable overall. Season one, set in 1847, was overseen by David Kajganich and Soo Hugh.

“The Terror has given us the opportunity to take a unique approach to the anthology format,” said David Madden, the president of original programming for AMC, SundanceTV and AMC Studios. “We loved the concept of beginning with an actual historical event and overlaying it with a fictional horror element, and we are immensely proud of this show’s combination of cinematic scope and intimate character work. We are thrilled to announce a second season and dramatize one of the most chilling and important events of the 20th century, guided by the vision of the gifted Alexander Woo and Max Borenstein.”

“I’m deeply honored to be telling a story set in this extraordinary period,” said Woo. “We hope to convey the abject terror of the historical experience in a way that feels modern and relevant to the present moment. And the prospect of doing so with a majority Asian and Asian-American cast is both thrilling and humbling.”

“As a history-buff and genre geek (not to mention a conscious American today), it’s clear that truth is always scarier than fiction,” said Borenstein. “This season of The Terror uses as its setting one of the darkest, most horrific moments in our nation’s history. The Japanese-American internment is a blemish on the nation’s conscience—and one with dire resonance to current events. I’m thrilled that AMC is giving us the chance to use that darkness as the inspiration for what I hope will be a trenchant, terrifying season of TV.”