I’m starting to notice a bit of a trend here, that more and more shows are starting to realize just how fed up viewers are with interminable waits between seasons, so they’re accelerating production on new seasons to be just months later or even while a show is still airing, if it’s renewed early enough. However, for shows with long production times, even that can be a problem, as is the case for Pluribus.
There’s somewhat bad news about the future, second release date of Pluribus, the hit Apple TV series that has taken over for Severance in terms of fan theorizing and weekend discussion in the streaming space. Pluribus was renewed almost immediately after the season 1 premiere on November 7. I imagine that was always the plan, short of the show totally tanking at release, which clearly it did not.
But now we have information on a few fronts, that late last month, the writers room on season 2 was already in motion (it may have started even before renewal, as often happens for confident series). Then, reportedly, according to crew members, the show is meant to start filming in the spring of 2026, which would be just a few months from now. So, what does that mean for a release date:
- Pluribus season 1 started filming in February 2024 and was released in November 2025, which is a year and nine months apart. Very lengthy for filming and post-production in the industry, most of the time. Of note, this was after the 2023 writers and actors strikes.
- If Pluribus season 2 starts filming in let’s say, March 2026, on the early side of spring, 21 months after that would be December 2027. So, even with a filming start date relatively quickly after season 1 here, that would mean the show would return in December 2027, if not early 2028, over two years from now. Even if production time is reduced this time, I don’t imagine it would be much under two years.
Again, most of the issue here is filming and post-production time, not Apple sitting on a renewal, which sometimes happens. This is not the easiest show to film, even if we’re not talking about loads of blockbuster VFX. Reportedly, Pluribus costs $15 million an episode, which would be $135 million for a nine-episode season. Severance season 2 cost supposedly $20 million per episode, and we know how long that gap was between seasons 1 and 2 there.
We just have to hope that production time is cut down for season 2, so we can maybe get this closer to a year and a half. But given the context here, that seems pretty ambitious, and like it’s going to be a typically long wait between seasons of a big show here. We are a long way from five seasons and 64 episodes of Breaking Bad in five years.
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