AMC Orders Season Two of Anthology Series ‘The Terror’

AMC has renewed its anthology series The Terror for a second season. The next season will be set during World War II and center on a specter that menaces a Japanese-American community from its home in Southern California to the internment camps to the war in the Pacific.

There will be 10 episodes in the new season, which is expected to air in 2019.

The Terror is an AMC Studios production, produced by Scott Free, Emjag Productions and Entertainment 360. The series is distributed internationally by AMC Studios. Season two is co-created and executive produced by Alexander Woo and Max Borenstein. Woo will be showrunner. Ridley Scott, Dan Simmons, David W. Zucker, Alexandra Milchan, Scott Lambert and Guymon Casady are also executive producers.

The Terror has given us the opportunity to take a unique approach to the anthology format,” said David Madden, president of original programming at AMC, Sundance TV and AMC Studios. “We loved the concept of beginning with an actual historical event and overlaying it with a fictional horror element, and we are immensely proud of this show's combination of cinematic scope and intimate character work. We are thrilled to announce a second season and dramatize one of the most chilling and important events of the 20th century, guided by the vision of the gifted Alexander Woo and Max Borenstein.”

The first season was inspired by a true story about the Royal Navy’s perilous voyage in 1847 while attempting to discover the Northwest Passage.

“I'm deeply honored to be telling a story set in this extraordinary period,” said Woo. “We hope to convey the abject terror of the historical experience in a way that feels modern and relevant to the present moment. And the prospect of doing so with a majority Asian and Asian-American cast is both thrilling and humbling.”

“As a history-buff and genre geek (not to mention a conscious American today), it’s clear that truth is always scarier than fiction,” said Borenstein. “This season of The Terror uses as its setting one of the darkest, most horrific moments in our nation’s history. The Japanese-American internment is a blemish on the nation’s conscience — and one with dire resonance to current events. I’m thrilled that AMC is giving us the chance to use that darkness as the inspiration for what I hope will be a trenchant, terrifying season of TV.”

Michael Malone

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C/Multichannel News, covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot, about what’s new in television, and Series Business, a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy and New York magazine.