It’s been five years since The Knick bowed out of television, but Steven Soderbergh recently revealed there’s a pilot script for a revival. Potentially, the planned series will star André Holland.
Cinemax aired two seasons of the period medical drama, The Knick, in 2014 and 2015. The cable network did not confirm the show’s cancellation until 2017 amid speculations that a season 3 script existed.
The speculations never died down since the cancellation, and now the producer has confirmed plans to bring the series back.
In an interview with The Playlist, Soderbergh said that Holland and Barry Jenkins have been working on a new story with the show’s creators Jack Amiel and Michael Begler.
“[The pilot] seems to be advancing rapidly,” Soderbergh said. “I just read the pilot, which is terrific.”
If things go well into the plan, The Knick revival might be streaming on HBO Max, according to Deadline. Soderbergh, however, doesn’t seem to be part of the production this time.
“I told [Holland and Jenkins], ’Look, I had, I had my shot. Godspeed, take it in whatever direction you want.’” Soderbergh said.
The original plan for season 3
Before the show’s cancellation, Soderbergh shared that he insisted on shooting The Knick season 3 in “anamorphic black-and-white.” In hindsight, he thinks that this was one of the reasons Cinemax decided not to renew the show.
However, Cinemax was on its way to changing its programming and cutting back on original shows. Meanwhile, most of the actors were also just signed for a two-year contract and had to go through another negotiation if the show received a third season renewal.
Fans also thought that HBO would swoop the series from its sister network, but nothing panned out.
The Knick cast, plot, and other details
The drama series starred Clive Owen as Dr. John W. “Thack” Thackery, as a popular surgeon at the Knickerbocker Hospital in New York in the 1900s. Holland played Dr. Algernon C. Edwards, the assistant chief surgeon who ran an after-hours clinic for the Black community.
The show focused on a time of groundbreaking medical discoveries when antibiotics still did not exist. One of the episodes in the second season featured the typhoid pandemic.
The Knick also starred Eric Johnson as Dr. Everett Gallinger, Juliet Rylance as Cornelia Robertson, Eve Hewson as Lucy Elkins, Jeremy Bobb as Herman Barrow, Michael Angarano as Dr. Bertram “Bertie” Chickering Jr., and Chris Sullivan as Tom Cleary and Cara Seymour as Sister Harriet.
Image courtesy of Cinemax/YouTube