Showtime will breathe new life into the Ray Donovan franchise with a full-length feature film, the network announced Wednesday.
Liev Schreiber will return as the series’ lead characters in the movie, as well as co-write the script along with series showrunner David Hollander. The series, which follows the exploits of Donovan -- a fixer who makes celebrity problems disappear -- ended its seven-season run on Showtime in January 2020.
The film will pick up and the end of the series’s seventh and final season with Donovan determined to find his father Mickey (played by Jon Voight) before he can cause any more carnage, according to Showtime. The film will also weave together the present-day fallout from the Donovan/Sullivan feud with Ray and Mickey’s origin story from 30 years ago, said the network. The only other cast news Showtime mentioned was Kerris Dorsey returning as Ray's daughter, Bridget.
“When Ray Donovan went off our air after seven great seasons, we heard from so many of its loyal fans that they were not ready to say goodbye to Ray and the wonderfully dysfunctional Donovan clan,” said Showtime co-president of Entertainment Gary Levine in a statement. “And so, for them, we are delighted that Liev and David are creating a thrilling new chapter of this iconic series.”
Read Also: Variety Show 'Ziwe' Starts on Showtime May 9
Hollander had said he was surprised by the cancelation and that he and Schreiber had planned on doing an eighth season. "This was in no way a series finale," Hollander told Vulture after the news broke following the season ender. Hollander conceded that the show, which moved to New York from Los Angeles for the sixth and seventh seasons, was expensive to produce and said the decision to cancel came amidst the backdrop of Showtime parent CBS and Viacom merging in December 2019. A year ago, Schreiber dropped a hint on Instagram that, because of fan support perceived by the powers that be, "there will be more Ray Donovan."
