Rejoice, The Expanse fans! Amazon has heard your calls.
The streaming-video service is reportedly in talks to revive the beloved sci-fi show, based on the James S. A. Corey book series, for a fourth season after it was dropped by its US TV network home last week.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos reportedly wanted The Expanse from the start. According to the Hollywood Reporter:
Sources say Bezos is a big fan of the book and was livid that the TV series went to NBCUniversal-owned Syfy. The move is said to have ignited Bezos’ demand that Amazon Studios brass find the company’s version of Game of Thrones.
The Expanse, which has 100% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for its third season, is already a cult favorite. Amazon may try to make it a phenomenon. It’s already demonstrated a strong interest in genre series, having purchased the TV rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings franchise.
The writers of The Expanse said on Twitter that the deal with Amazon is not done yet, and encouraged fans to remain vigilant in their fight to save the show.
Devotees on Reddit and elsewhere called on streaming services like Amazon and Netflix to pick up the show after it was cancelled. Diehards even hired an airplane reading “Save The Expanse” to fly outside the Amazon Studios headquarters in California. And nearly 132,000 people signed a Change.org petition to revive it.
The company that produces the show, Alcon Entertainment, shopped The Expanse to other networks when it was dropped by Syfy, which held the first-run TV rights in the US. Amazon streamed the first three seasons in the US, and Netflix streamed it in many countries abroad.