It's been a week since Amazon unveiled its adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel The Last Tycoon, and the lavish period drama about Hollywood politics is certainly a sight to see, as show creator Billy Ray crafted a show that's as gorgeous as it is intriguing, mixing real historical figures with real-world characters. But perhaps the greatest aspect of adapting an unfinished novel into a television show is the fact that, similar to the two Tycoon editions where the text was finished by different authors, it's a blank canvas for a creator's imagination. But what about the show's future?
During the Amazon press junket for The Last Tycoon, CinemaBlend and other outlets spoke with show creator Billy Ray, the man behind the scripts to such films as Captain Phillips and The Hunger Games. And while the retail giant turned content provider is probably looking to gauge the public's reaction to The Last Tycoon a little more before greenlighting any further seasons, Ray seems ready to get to work at a moment's notice. He laid out his thoughts on the show's future at Amazon as follows:
As soon as Amazon says to us that we get a second season, we'll start to break that season down. We have a very good idea of where that season's going to go. We have a very good idea where Season 5 is going to go, all the way up to the last scene of the last episode. Unless we find something better. We know what our North Star is, we are aiming towards it. If the audience responds as we hope they will, we'll dive right into Season 2.
While I would personally really like to see more seasons of The Last Tycoon, I can see why Amazon would be a little gun-shy to order up more episodes at this point. Despite Netflix's occasional rapid renewals, streaming shows usually need a little more time to get off of the ground without constant TV adverts, and the metrics of success are different from that of a broadcast television show. Still, with many shows' creative teams making things up as they go along on a weekly basis, to hear Billy Ray say that he's got so many fixed points planned out for at least a five-season run is really something.
This is not only great and hopeful news for fans of The Last Tycoon, but the cast members found Billy Ray's comprehensive vision pretty inspirational. Lily Collins spoke to that point in a separate interview that same day, and she explained to us how she fell for the project, all thanks to Ray's big pitch:
My first meeting with Billy Ray was one of those that [when] I left, I would have been devastated if I wasn't able to be a part of this, because he basically just rattled off my entire future. He's like, 'And then in Season 5, Episode this, at the end of the series, and this.' . . . He's mapped out exactly where he wants me to go. He gave me a rough outline; of course, all that -- once you get a writer's room going -- can slightly deviate. But the main stops along the way, he kind of pinned out.
A potential future for The Last Tycoon does exist on paper, and all it really needs is an official go-ahead to become an eventual reality. It's the sort of situation that most shows would ideally want to find themselves in at one point or another, and if there's enough of an audience streaming the historical series on Amazon Prime, we'll hopefully be seeing Billy Ray's lush Hollywood drama returning for years to come.
You can stream the entire first season of The Last Tycoon on Amazon Prime now; and you don't need to look far to see what's remaining in this summer's TV line-up, as well as what' coming with our fall TV schedule.
