Snowpiercer Will Come To A Stop After Season 4 On TNT
It's the end of the line for "Snowpiercer," the TNT original series based on the Bong Joon-ho film and the graphic novel "Le Transperceneige" by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette. The upcoming fourth season of the show, starring Daveed Diggs, Jennifer Connelly, and Sean Bean, will be its last.
It seems like only yesterday that "Snowpiercer" premiered on TNT after numerous delays and showrunner changes. The post-apocalyptic sci-fi series, which follows the class struggles aboard a train with a perpetual motion engine, was in development as far back as 2015, the year after Bong's film saw its stateside release and two years after it made its world premiere in South Korea. When this new long-form version of "Snowpiercer" finally arrived on U.S. television at the outset of the pandemic in May 2020, its dystopian premise seemed less like science fiction and more like a frozen-over hyper-reality mirroring our own frayed capitalist society.
"Snowpiercer" aired its 10-episode third season from January to March of this year, and that's the same bracket when it aired its second season in 2021. Viewers still have the fourth and final season, currently in production, to look forward to in 2023, but a network spokesperson told Deadline:
"We can confirm that Snowpiercer will end after a successful, multi-season run on TNT. Its talented writers, actors and crew took an extraordinary premise and brought it to life in thrilling ways. It was critically-acclaimed, had a significant impact on the post-apocalyptic genre, and now remains in the hearts and minds of fans forever."
Say goodbye to original scripted programming on TNT
TNT's only other original hour-long drama, "Animal Kingdom," which, like "Snowpiercer," is based on an imported film — in this case, the 2010 Australian crime drama by David Michôd — is set to air the first two episodes of its sixth and final season this Sunday, June 19, 2022. This means "Snowpiercer" will be TNT's last remaining original scripted show after "Animal Kingdom" wraps up this summer.
According to Deadline, the recent merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery into Warner Bros. Discovery (which owns TNT), led to an accelerated "scaling back on original scripted fare" at the network. These two shows had been towing the line in that regard, but the final season of "Snowpiercer" will mark the end of an era for TNT. In 2020, the show was "the No. 1 new scripted drama on all of ad-supported cable."
While it's cutting back on the television side of things, Warner Bros. Discovery is still targeting 25 theatrical releases per year. The final season of "Snowpiercer" does not have a premiere date yet, but look for it in 2023.