HBO’s Crazy Rich Asians Series, Elizabeth Banks as Karen Read, and a Stargate Reboot: The Week in TV Deals

LOS ANGELES

Some weeks the television business trickles. This was not one of those weeks. Between New York Comic Con panels and the trades’ inboxes, the last seven days delivered the busiest development slate of the fall: HBO ordered the Crazy Rich Asians sequel the film has been chasing for eight years; Prime Video cast Elizabeth Banks as Karen Read; Netflix went back to the Bridgerton well and into the jungle; Apple TV kept buying instead of making; and Amazon dug Stargate out of the reboot graveyard for another swing. Here’s everything that moved — each item verified against the trades — and what it actually means.

The crown jewelCrazy Rich Asians comes home to HBO

The biggest greenlight of the week belongs to HBO, which on October 8 ordered Crazy Rich Asians — an eight-episode drama set after the 2018 film, with the core cast coming back: Constance Wu, Henry Golding and Ronny Chieng star, with Michelle Yeoh returning in a recurring role. Adele Lim, who co-wrote the film, is the showrunner and an executive producer; Jon M. Chu and Kevin Kwan — the film’s director and the author of the novel that started it all — executive produce alongside Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson. It’s set to debut in 2027, USA Today reports.

This one has been eight years in the making, and the backstory is the interesting part. A feature sequel has been in limbo since the film’s $239 million run on a $30 million budget — the first major Hollywood film with an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club, powered by the #GoldOpen movement. In 2019 Lim exited the planned sequel over a pay-disparity fight: she was offered a reported $110,000 against roughly $800,000-plus for co-writer Peter Chiarelli. The project migrated to television in 2025, and this time Lim runs the room.

Kwan told USA Today the HBO series offers “the breathing room of an HBO series,” and Lim framed it as “the sequel we’ve been waiting for” — eight hours instead of two. HBO content chief Casey Bloys said: “We are so ecstatic that Adele and the group behind the history-making movie are bringing the next chapter of this story to life.” Translation: the most culturally significant romantic comedy of the last decade is getting the prestige-TV treatment it probably should have gotten years ago.

The eyebrow-raiser here isn’t the pickup — it’s that it took this long. A $239 million-grossing cultural phenomenon waited eight years for its next chapter because of a pay dispute that never should have happened. HBO gets the prestige, Lim gets the room she was always owed, and we get eight hours of Nick and Rachel. Better late than never, but still: late.

True crimePrime Video’s Karen Read gamble

Prime Video is going full tabloid prestige with an untitled eight-episode drama about the Karen Read case, starring Elizabeth Banks as Read — and producing it, too. The series is inspired by the Law&Crime/Audible podcast Karen, TheWrap reports. Justin Noble, late of The Sex Lives of College Girls and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, writes and showruns; David E. Kelley executive produces; Warner Bros. Television is the studio, with Banks’ Brownstone, Audible and Law&Crime aboard. The story: a Boston police officer found dead in a blizzard, and the girlfriend who claimed she was the victim of a conspiracy.

Banks has a personal hook — she grew up in Massachusetts and said she “watched this case divide families, friends, and entire towns.” The Read saga has already been podcasted, docuseried and live-tweeted to death; Prime Video is betting there’s a scripted layer nobody’s cracked yet. With Banks and Kelley, the pedigree is real. Whether the audience wants to relive this particular blizzard is the open question.

NetflixDoubling down on Bridgerton, heading for the jungle

Netflix is doing what Netflix does: feeding its biggest franchise and hunting for the next one. The streamer ordered an untitled Bridgerton prequel limited series centered on a young Lady Violet and her romance with Viscount Edmund. Shonda Rhimes is writing it and co-showrunning with Nicholas Nardini; Tom Verica directs and executive produces; Betsy Beers EPs for Shondaland. It’s based on Julia Quinn’s Violet in Bloom — and if Queen Charlotte’s 2023 prequel is any indication, expect it to be enormous. Season 5 is currently filming in London, with Season 6 already renewed.

The other Netflix order is weirder and, frankly, more interesting. Feral is a seven-episode dark comedy thriller based on Shirley Conran’s 1987 novel Savages — a jungle drama about a group of women. The cast is stacked: Michelle Dockery plays Julia, Jessica Gunning — fresh off her Baby Reindeer Emmy — plays Annie, with Genevieve O’Reilly, Quintessa Swindell and Dolly de Leon rounding out the ensemble. Jude Mack created and wrote it; Emma Freeman directs; Hera Pictures produces with Warner Bros. International Television Production, shooting in Australia.

Gunning going from Baby Reindeer to a jungle thriller opposite Downton Abbey’s Dockery is the kind of casting that makes you sit up. This has sleeper hit written all over it — or glorious mess. Either way, appointment viewing.

Streaming warsRoku’s rom-com detective, Angel’s recovery dramedy

The Roku Channel is getting into the detective business with Scarlett Holmes, a limited series starring Lucy Hale — who also executive produces — as a modern-day descendant of Sherlock Holmes solving mysteries of the dating and relationship variety. Her sidekick is Jane Watson; her love interest is Ollie Moriarty, a podcast producer planning an exposé on her. Paris Herbert-Taylor and Katie Wilbert write; Jaggi Entertainment produces; it’s expected in 2027. A rom-com Sherlock descendant with a Moriarty love interest is either genius or unhinged, and I mean that as a compliment.

Meanwhile Angel — the rebranded Angel Studios, home of the faith-and-family crowd — ordered Quitters, an eight-episode half-hour dramedy about addiction now in production in Utah. Craig Ferguson stars as Nick McTavers, a washed-up ex-heavy-metal musician running a recovery center called Unplugged, with Megyn Price as Liza, a soccer mom battling an opioid addiction. Dave Parkin created and wrote it. Ferguson doing recovery dramedy is a genuinely inspired bit of casting — the man’s whole public persona is built on having been through it.

AcquisitionsApple TV keeps shopping abroad

Apple TV’s newest drama isn’t an Apple original at all — and that’s the story. The streamer acquired Dustfall, a six-episode Australian “tropic noir” starring Anna Torv as Detective Antigone “Tig” Pollard, based on Vikki Petraitis’ novel The Unbelieved. Dianne Taylor wrote it; Emma Freeman — yes, her again, she’s having a week — directs; Soapbox Films and Moonriver produce, with Federation International handling sales. It premieres on ABC Australia on October 11, 2026, and lands on Apple TV everywhere else in 2027, per the Apple TV press release.

This is Apple’s second straight acquisition after Small Prophets, and it signals a real strategy shift: for years Apple TV built its brand on splashy originals; now it’s buying finished international series the way Netflix did a decade ago. For viewers it doesn’t matter where the thing came from — Torv leading a tropic noir is a yes from me.

PilotsTwo with real heat

FX handed out a pilot order to an untitled crime drama with a jaw-dropping pedigree: the story comes from Wong Kar Wai, Hiro Murai directs, and the script is by Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown) and Julia Cho (Turning Red), with Searchlight Television producing. Havana Rose Liu stars. It shoots in Bangkok, and the premise is pure noir: a petty criminal inherits a share in a mysterious, powerful corporation. Wong Kar Wai plus Hiro Murai plus Bangkok is a combination my brain can barely process. This is the pilot I’m watching closest.

Netflix, meanwhile, ordered a pilot — not a series, a pilot, the old-fashioned way — for an adaptation of Louise Rennison’s Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson books that defined a generation of British teens. Monica Heisey writes, Jim O’Hanlon directs, Fifth Season and Rise Films produce in the UK. The 2008 Gurinder Chadha film has a devoted cult; the question is whether Georgia Nicolson’s diary translates to 2026. I’m cautiously optimistic — Heisey is very funny.

In developmentThe earlier-stages pile

ABC gave a pilot order to Rabbit, its American take on the BBC’s Ludwig — Megan Ganz and Humphrey Ker write and executive produce, with Jon Steinberg and Dan Shotz EP’ing, and David Mitchell, Mark Brotherhood and Kenton Allen aboard from the original. The setup: Mark, a reclusive puzzle writer known as “Rabbit,” gets pulled into the Cambridge, Massachusetts police department when his twin brother goes missing. A puzzle-solving recluse helping the cops is well-worn ground, but Ganz writing it is the reason to pay attention.

Amazon MGM is taking another run at Stargate, with Jac Schaeffer developing a new series under her overall deal and a writers’ room opening now. Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell of Safehouse executive produce. This is the second attempt — Martin Gero’s version was scrapped back in June. The franchise has been dormant since Stargate Universe ended in 2011, and the fanbase is still out there, still mad about it. Schaeffer’s WandaVision pedigree makes this genuinely intriguing.

Apple landed the rights to All the Little Houses in a competitive situation — a drama based on May Cobb’s January 2026 novel, from the author of The Hunting Wives. Cobb co-creates with Naomi Sheldon (Prime Video’s The Girlfriend); Fifth Season produces. It’s still early, but Cobb is having a moment and Apple clearly wants in.

The wildest card: AR Content is developing Sickert, a historical thriller set in 1888 London built around the theory that painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper. László Nemes — the Son of Saul director — co-writes and directs, with Adam Baroukh co-writing and Alexander Rodnyansky producing. No network attached yet. A Son of Saul director doing Jack the Ripper is either going to be a masterpiece or completely unwatchable, and honestly both outcomes sound interesting.

And CBS has Scott Bakula headlining an untitled high-concept detective procedural in early development — Bakula stars and executive produces, Michael Sussman (Perception) writes, Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment produces, set in Los Angeles. Fifteen years after NCIS: New Orleans, Bakula’s coming home to the procedural. The man knows his lane.

The calendarMark these dates

The premiere calendar filled up too. New dates: the Hindi crime drama Chaar Yaar hits Prime Video October 23 (eight episodes, early-2000s Mumbai); Homestead: The Series returns to Angel November 3; All’s Fair Season 2 premieres on Hulu November 4 with a three-episode drop, then weekly — read our trailer coverage; North of North Season 2 premieres in the US November 5 on Netflix; Under Siege lands November 6; The Institute Season 2 arrives November 8 on MGM+; The Empress ends with a six-episode third season November 12 on Netflix; Mayfair Witches: Salem Coven premieres December 30 on AMC and AMC+ after its New York Comic Con panel; Prime Video’s Bloodaxe debuts January 20, 2027 — eight episodes, and it’s already renewed for Season 2 before a frame has aired; Apple’s Prodigies, with Will Sharpe and Ayo Edebiri, premieres February 10, 2027 with two episodes, running seven episodes through March 17; and Hulu’s The Land, Dan Fogelman’s football drama with Christopher Meloni, Mandy Moore and William H. Macy, premieres February 15, 2027 with a two-episode debut, then weekly.

That’s a lot of television. February is already looking stacked — Prodigies and The Land five days apart is a genuine collision.

RenewedThe good-news pile

On the renewal front: Tulsa King got a fifth season from Paramount+ — ahead of the Season 4 premiere on October 16 — with production moving from Atlanta to New York and Scarlet Rose Stallone upped to series regular. Here’s what we know about Season 4. Pass the Salt, the queer interfaith comedy from Panta Mosleh, got an early Season 2 from OUTtv ahead of its November 2 debut. Apple’s Imperfect Women returns for Season 2, with Kerry Washington’s Eleanor taking the lead and Elisabeth Moss staying on as executive producer only. And Netflix renewed The Hunting Wives for a third season — before Season 2 has even premiered on November 26. That’s confidence. (Or fear. Usually confidence.)

The revolving doorFired, and a castle

The week’s messiest headline: Gail Lerner was fired as showrunner of NBC’s Newlyweds over “creative differences,” just two weeks before the show’s October 23 premiere. The sitcom was co-created by Lerner and Jamie Lee Curtis and stars Téa Leoni and Tim Daly. Lerner ran the first six episodes; now someone else has to land the plane. A showrunner exit this close to premiere is never a good sign — but the cast is strong enough that I’m not writing it off.

And in the sweetest news of the week, Abbott Elementary is filming its 100th episode at Disneyland — the full story is here. A century of episodes and a castle. Some shows get all the luck. For what’s on tonight, check the Sunday guide.

More from the newsroom: Abbott Elementary’s 100th episode at Disneyland · Tulsa King Season 4 · All’s Fair Season 2 · Tonight’s TV guide