HBO Max has renewed the “Gossip Girl” revival for a second season, proclaiming “record viewership over its first weekend on the platform.” The 12-episode first season has been broken up into two parts, and its second six episodes will roll out in November. Using the vague language typical of streaming services, HBO Max called “Gossip Girl” its “best launch for a Max Original Drama series this year” in the renewal announcement.
The renewal also touted “Gossip Girl” as a social media phenomenon: “The series had 15 billion total social impressions at launch and the series gained around 5.2 billion impressions from content inspired by the series on TikTok.”
A representative from HBO Max said Thursday that the number of episodes for Season 2, as well as when production will begin are still to be announced.
In interviews with Variety before the show’s July 8 launch, showrunner Joshua Safran — who was an executive producer of the original “Gossip Girl” on The CW — said the idea that made him want to do the revived show was when he thought of making the teachers at the school Gossip Girl.
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“It’s a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story,” Safran said. “It’s a cautionary tale. We will be tracking not just what Gossip Girl does to the kids, but what being Gossip Girl does to them. And it is incredibly messy and morally compromised, obviously.”
And whereas the world of the original show was mostly white and straight, the HBO Max version would be different, he said: “I wanted to be more inclusive; I wanted to showcase a more diverse universe; I wanted to tell more queer stories.”
The cast of the first season is Jordan Alexander, Eli Brown, Thomas Doherty, Tavi Gevinson, Emily Alyn Lind, Evan Mock, Zion Moreno, Whitney Peak and Savannah Lee Smith with Todd Almond, Adam Chanler-Berat, Johnathan Fernandez and Jason Gouty.
“Gossip Girl” is based on the young adult novels by Cecily von Ziegesar, as well as the original show, which was developed by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who are executive producers of the revived series as well.
The show is produced by their company, Fake Empire, which includes Lis Rowinski as co-executive producer, and Alloy Entertainment, represented by executive producers Leslie Morgenstein and Gina Girolamo. “Gossip Girl” is from Warner Bros. Television and CBS Studios.
“Gossip Girl” is written, executive produced and developed by Safran of Random Acts.
