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WIRE Buzz: NOS4A2 stalls out at AMC; Adult Swim renews Tartakovksy's Primal; SYFY summons 'The Summoner'

By Josh Weiss
NOS4A2 Season 2

Charlie Manx's joyride has come to an end, Variety reports. AMC is canceling NOS4A2 after two seasons. Showrunner Jami O’Brien revealed the news in a series of tweets. "CONGRATULATIONS to every single member of our phenomenal team on two seasons of weird and wonderful TV," she wrote.

She later added: "And THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart to everyone who tuned in — especially to those who tweeted along with us each week — you made Sunday nights a lot of fun. Hope to do it again with you all somewhere down the road... xoxoxo."

Based on Joe Hill's 2013 novel of the same name, the series centered around Vic McQueen (Ashleigh Cummings), a young woman capable of traveling great distances via the "Inscapes" of her imagination. This power puts her into the sights of Manx, a vampiric madman, who uses his own Inscape powers to abduct children and drain children of their life-forces. Once done with them, he deposits the kids (now demonic husks) in a holiday-themed location called Christmasland.

Season 1 told more of an original story, while Season 2 was much closer to the source material, in which Vic works to rescue her young son from Manx's clutches. In late June, O'Brien talked about the possibility of more seasons, stating: 

"You know one of the wonderful things about what Joe set up in the novel is that, there are a lot of Strong Creatives in the world, and some of them are good like, Maggie Leigh, and some of them aren't so good, like Charlie Manx," she told Comic Book Resources. "And so I think that, were we lucky enough to have multiple seasons and overrun the book, I think that there's a lot implied within the novel for future seasons."


While NOS4A2's story is coming to an end, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal is just getting started. Adult Swim announced today that it had renewed the prehistoric animated series for a second season of 10 additional episodes. The sophomore outing will premiere Sunday, Oct. 4 at 11:30 p.m. EST.

Set at the dawn of the world, the show is about the primeval exploits of a caveman and his fearsome dinosaur companion. Primal has absolutely no dialogue (a similar trick used in certain episodes of Samurai Jack, which Tartakovsky also created).

Primal

"With suspense, heartbreak, excitement, love and fear all without a single word of dialogue, the series is a painting come to life, relying solely on music and graphic imagery to tell the story of two unlikely allies as they navigate through a treacherous world," reads the official description. "After bonding over unfortunate tragedies, they seem to become each other’s only hope of survival against a common enemy."


Over in TZGZ Land, SYFY has placed an order for The Summoner, a brand-new animated project from Stoopid Buddy Stoodios and New Yorker cartoonist Charlie Hankin.

Based on Hankin's short film of the same name (watch it below), the 2D series is about Rory, a 20-something who is living on his own for the first time. Here's the hitch: he's sharing a two-bedroom apartment with the titular Summoner, a magical alien that can summon any object in existence. While that sounds really cool on paper, The Summoner's grasp on the English language isn't the greatest and he uses his power to summon useless objects.

"The Summoner is a perfect example of how we’re experimenting with content for TZGZ by continuing to add smart stories from unique voices, but also playing with different formats and new animation styles, like Charlie’s distinctive hand-drawn look," Jon Cotton, VP, Short-Form Animation & Alternative Formats for SYFY, said in a statement. “Working with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios on this project was a no-brainer, given their track record for creating some of the buzziest adult animation out there.”

"We’ve been a fan of Charlie’s work for The New Yorker for quite some time," added Matthew Senreich (Robot Chicken, Crossing Swords), co-founder of Stoopid Buddy Stoodios. "We love the offbeat, observational humor of his comics, and can’t wait to bring his singular voice and design sensibilities into the world of animation as part of the TZGZ line-up."

The network will air 10, three-minute episodes that are scheduled to debut sometime in 2021. Seth Senreich, Green, Hankin, John Harvatine IV, Eric Towner, and Chris Waters are attached as executive producers.