While the Netflix series “Ripley” launched this past weekend with a “limited series” moniker, showrunner Steve Zaillian thinks the show could continue in a second season and beyond. He’ll just need a bit of a break first.
The eight-episode “Ripley” – which Zaillian wrote and directed in its entirety – adapts Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 book “The Talented Mr. Ripley” with Andrew Scott as the titular chameleon, a forger who ingratiates himself into the life of trust fund playboy Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) in Europe. The story quickly turns to murder, and Ripley must contort and adapt himself in order to survive.
There are, of course, many more books featuring the Tom Ripley character beyond “Talented Mr. Ripley,” and Zaillian told TheWrap that he’d be keen on continuing the story should Netflix want more.
“I think other ones are certainly possible. We have the rights to all the books, so we could do it. I’ll need a little break but yeah, I think he’s a good enough character that you could do more.”
Scott didn’t shoot down the idea in a separate interview with TheWrap, but the “All of Us Strangers” actor did say the process of making the first season was taxing.
“It’s been such a long, long process with this one. I’m just very interested to see how this one goes out,” he said, then added with a laugh, “To be honest, after this year, I’m just looking forward to taking a break.”
The Tom Ripley character appears in five Highsmith novels in total, with the most recent one, “Ripley Under Water,” published in 1991. The Netflix series ends in a way that completes the “Talented Mr. Ripley” storyline but also sets Scott’s character up for more misadventures with the police hot on his tail. The backbone of the Tom Ripley stories, of course, is a cat-and-mouse game in which Tom almost gets caught but always gets away.
“Ripley” was originally ordered and produced by Showtime as an ongoing drama series, but the network sold the show to Netflix in February 2023. The streamer subsequently promoted and released the show as a limited series, but that hasn’t stopped other shows planned as limited series from continuing with subsequent installments either serialized (“Big Little Lies”) or anthology (“True Detective”).
Netflix has not publicly declared whether a continuation is possible and has not ordered any additional installments. The streamer is campaigning “Ripley” for the current Emmys cycle in the limited series category.
Benjamin Lindsay contributed to this story.
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