Seeing as how crime procedurals and hospital shows are consistently the most watched shows on television, it doesn’t seem likely that a show about the computer boom of the early 1980s would be able to carve out a place for itself. But hell, there are roughly as many networks these days as there were computers in the early ‘80s – an assessment based on nothing – and so perhaps it’s no surprise that a critically acclaimed drama like Halt and Catch Fire not only made it through two seasons, but just got renewed for a third one from AMC.
AMC’s order for Season 3 came with the expected number of 10 episodes, the same as Seasons 1 and 2. Something that won’t be the same, however, is the showrunner. Executive producer Jonathan Lisco has stepped down from the duty, and the show’s creators and writers Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers have been promoted for the gig. Makes sense, as they would already in a prime position to know how they wanted to tell this story.
Here’s what AMC’s president of original programming and development Joel Stillerman said about the renewal.
We are so thankful for the talent and leadership of Jonathan Lisco over these first two seasons and glad that we are able to continue this story with co-creators and showrunners Chris Cantwell and Chris Rogers at the helm. In a world of TV series filled with scary, mythical creatures like zombies and dragons, we’re thrilled to be able to follow these characters to Silicon Valley and finally bring unicorns to television.
Indeed. And if we’re being brutally honest here, AMC is putting way more faith and money into Halt and Catch Fire than most other networks probably would at this point, considering how dismal the ratings situation has been for the show. The series premiere was the only episode of the 20 to get watched by more than a million people when it aired, and things got worse from there. The Season 2 premiere only brought in around 660,000 viewers, and that finale was watched by fewer than half a million people when it aired live. The network does have The Walking Dead, though, so that probably helps to keep things balanced over there.
In Halt and Catch Fire, Lee Pace plays Joe MacMillan, a former IBM employee with goals on conquering other aspects of the market outside of that company, and he enlists Scoot McNairy’s system builder Gordon Clark to help him, as well as Mackenzie Davis’ Cameron Howe. By the time Season 2 ended, everyone is in California as Joe has started his own company, Gordon is trying to save his marriage and Cameron is shifting her company’s location.
We can expect Season 3 of Halt and Catch Fire to hit AMC at the end of spring 2016.
