‘Man in the High Castle’ Renewed, Taps New Showrunner for Season 3

Amazon is returning to the Castle.

The streaming service and retailer has renewed The Man in the High Castle for a third season and brought in a showrunner to oversee the scripted drama, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Eric Overmyer has boarded the series as showrunner after the drama operated its sophomore season without an executive producer after Frank Spotnitz exited the series midway through production over budget and location issues. Overmyer takes over the drama after previously working with Amazon on Bosch. His credits also include The Affair and The Wire. Season three of Bosch, Amazon’s longest-running original, is expected to debut this year. The police procedural has been renewed for a fourth season.

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'Man in the High Castle' Team on Absence of Showrunner: "We're Running in Many Ways Like a Republic"

“We’re running, in many ways, like a republic,” executive producer David Zucker told reporters in August when asked who was serving as showrunner in Spotnitz’s absence.

Amazon, which does not release viewership information like other streamers including Netflix and Hulu, said in a release that Castle season two premiered with the most viewers of all of its original series over the show’s debut weekend (Dec. 16). Amazon in December 2015 said Castle had surpassed Bosch as its most-watched original during its freshman run.

“As timely as ever, the exploration of characters at a dark point for humanity has provided incredible stories for two seasons,” Amazon Studios head of comedy Joe Lewis said. “Eric and his team are doing an incredible job crafting stories about the inner lives of those who struggle to do good in a world that is not. We couldn’t be more excited to bring season three to customers in 2017.”

Castle, based on the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name, imagines a world where the U.S. lost World War II and is now occupied by Nazi Germany on the East Coast and Imperial Japan on the West Coast. Spotnitz created the series and remains credited as an exec producer alongside Ridley Scott, Zucker and Dick’s daughter, Isa Dick Hackett. Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans, Luke Kleintank, DJ Qualls, Joel De La Fuente, Brennan Brown, Bella Heathcote, Callum Keith Rennie, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Rufus Sewell star.

The Castle renewal comes after Amazon scrapped well-reviewed drama Good Girls Revolt following one season. The drama, produced by Sony Pictures Television, is being shopped to other outlets.

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Meanwhile, Amazon has yet to make decisions on the fate of Woody Allen’s Crisis in Six Scenes, David E. Kelley’s Goliath, Mozart in the Jungle, Red Oaks and import Fleabag. Next up for Amazon are I Love Dick, Jean-Claude Van Johnson, The Last Tycoon and Z: The Beginning of Everything.