Lucifer S01E02 Still - H 2016
Bettina Strauss/FOXFox has handed out another renewal for the 2017-18 season, giving an early-ish green light for a third season of Lucifer.
The Monday drama, which stars Tom Ellis as the devil working as a police liaison, premiered in 2016 and has been a dependable performer on the schedule with several different lead-ins. Season-to-date, it ranks 50th among broadcast series with a 1.9 rating among adults 18-49 and 6.2 million viewers in the most recent live-plus-7 Nielsen averages. Fox cites a significantly larger audience, 8 million, with multiplatform viewers taken into account.
“Lucifer is one of those rare shows that starts strong out of the gate, and just keeps getting better and better,” said network entertainment president David Madden. “Tom, Lauren [German] and the entire cast have really made these characters three-dimensional, and the production team — Jerry [Bruckheimer], Len [Wiseman], Jonathan [Littman], Joe [Henderson] and Ildy [Modrovich] — is one of the best in the business. We’d also like to thank our partners Warner Bros. for their commitment to this show and we look forward to seeing where this wildly innovative series takes us in season three.”
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Fox has been uncharacteristically shy about early renewals this year. Aside from Lucifer, the only series to get the early nod are no-brainers Empire and The Simpsons. That leaves nearly an entire roster waiting, since only veteran Bones is officially set to conclude this year.
It marks the first of three expected Fox renewals from Warner Bros. TV. The studio is also behind Batman drama Gotham and the solid freshman hit Lethal Weapon. Looking into the crystal ball, there’s only one new WB show in the running for the 2017 pack of pilots — and that’s the comedy Amy’s Brother from Melissa McCarthy. Fox, which paved the way with vertical integration, remains as invested in ever in ordering from sister studio (also overseen by network chiefs Dana Walden and Gary Newman) 20th Century Fox TV.
Lucifer, one of more than half a dozen TV series based on a DC Comics title, is currently on the bench for its midwinter break. It is set to resume its sophomore run on May 1 after the conclusion of APB — which debuted in its 9 p.m. time slot last week to promising early same-day returns.
