‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 Pushed to 2025: HBO ‘Had to Adjust Across the Board’ with Strikes
Audiences will have to wait a little bit longer to check into “The White Lotus” Season 3.
The third installment of the Emmy-winning HBO anthology series will arrive in 2025, according to chief content officer Casey Bloys.
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“‘White Lotus’ Season 3 probably would have been in ’24, that’s pushing to ’25,” Bloys said during a press conference. “It’s shows that we’ve had on the runway and we’re in the middle of shooting, obviously.”
Bloys continued with further updates, “‘Penguin’ would have been in the spring, so we’ve had to adjust across the board. The ‘It’ prequel we’re working on…’Welcome to Derry’ — we had that that scheduled previously for Halloween of ’24. That’s likely pushing into ’25.”
Pending the resolution of the SAG-AFTRA strike, “Welcome to Derry” will return to production in spring of 2024. “The Last of Us” Season 2 will shoot then as well.
“The White Lotus” Season 3 will be set in Thailand. Series creator Mike White was originally planning on having the season centered in Japan; however, according to Japanese producer Georgina Pope, a $4.4 million tax rebate with Thailand led production to change countries.
“The Thai government had just announced a renewal and improvement on their film incentive system. A 30 percent rebate. For their project, that meant $4.4 million alone,” Pope said during the Tokyo Film Festival. “Everyone looked at me with sympathy. At the time in Japan, we had no incentive in place at all. I could not respond with a concrete answer. All I could hear was the sound of a $35 million project flying out the window.”
White previously teased that “The White Lotus” Season 3 will explore “death and Eastern religion and spirituality,” saying in a post-finale Season 2 featurette, “The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex. I think the third season would be maybe a satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality. It feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus.”
Also slated to premiere in 2025 is “Euphoria” Season 3, with HBO drama chief Francesca Orsi revealing in the middle of the WGA strike that “ideally” the series will return three years after its second season aired.
“’Euphoria’ is one of those that we had begun writing in tandem with post-production on ‘Idol’ but at this point, we don’t have countless scripts,” Orsi said. “We can’t start shooting, so the delivery of that show — ideally in 2025 — will be determined on when we can pick back up with [series creator] Sam [Levinson], who at this point is all pencils down and just finishing posts on ‘Idol.’”
Levinson teased that the third season will be a “film noir” following Zendaya’s Rue having an existential crisis. Series costume designer Heidi Bivens told Vogue that “Euphoria” initially hoped to shoot in June 2023 and will have a time jump. “There is talk of it being approximately five years in the future,” Givens said, “and that they’re not in high school anymore. Dorothy’s not in Kansas anymore.”
Reporting by Tony Maglio and Erin Strecker.
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