'Fargo' TV miniseries gets second season on FX with new cast

[July 22, 2014]  BEVERLY HILLS Calif. (Reuters) - "Fargo," the Emmy-nominated television mini-series inspired by the Coen brothers' cult film, has been renewed for a second season that will feature a new storyline and characters, cable network FX said on Monday. 

The inaugural 10-episode series filmed in Canada received 18 Emmy nominations and is frontrunner for the best TV miniseries award. It also earned acting nods for Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Allison Tolman and Colin Hanks.

"It is a new cast of actors, which is kind of heartbreaking from my standpoint given how much I loved the actors," FX Networks chief executive John Landgraf told the summer meeting of the Television Critics Association.

"Fargo" earned more Emmy nominations than any single show in the history of the basic cable network, owned by Twenty-First Century Fox Inc, and this year was the second-ranked show in the number of total nominations for the Aug. 25 Emmys, behind HBO's medieval fantasy "Game of Thrones."

The TV version of "Fargo," which airs internationally, is a reimagining of the blood-soaked black comedy film of the same name by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.

The miniseries features a different "true crime" story and characters but a large dose of frigid Minnesota and Midwestern folksiness. The Coen brothers are producers but remained largely in the background of the production run by Noah Hawley.

The earliest the second season of "Fargo" will air will be a year from this fall, Landgraf said.

"We haven't worked out the timing of production, but the scripts are already well in progress," he said, adding that he hoped they would film again in Canada.

(Reporting by Mary Milliken,; Editing by Eric Kelsey and Cynthia Osterman)

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