Fox Renews ‘Scream Queens’ for Season Two, Announces New Setting

Fox is moving forward with a second season of Scream Queens.

Fox TV Group’s chairmen and CEOs Dana Walden and Gary Newman used their platform at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour Friday to share the news. In doing so, they also announced that the anthology series will move from its college campus setting to that of a hospital as the forthcoming season’s murder mystery will play out where some of the most fascinating and bizarre medical cases are under observation. 

Despite heavy star wattage (onscreen and off-) and a pricey promotional campaign in the months leading up to Scream Queens‘ September premiere, the horror comedy from Glee and American Horror Story‘s Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan struggled to lure live viewers en masse. But what it lacked in live viewership it made up for in DVR, on-demand and online audiences, and Walden and Newman quickly began touting the younger-skewing series as “the model for contemporary viewership.”

In fact, the series that Murphy’s long pitched as “bubble gum splashed with blood” became the No. 1 new series on VOD and social media this fall. Once multiplatform viewership was factored in over several weeks, Scream Queens’ same-day average registered a massive 167 percent lift, catapulting from 2.7 million viewers to 7.2 million. 

Still, Murphy and Walden have had multiple conversations in recent months about how to broaden out the series for season two. In an interview for his Hollywood Reporter cover story in October, Murphy revealed he’d pitched an iteration that would feature a cast of all different age groups. At that time, he said some of season one’s survivors would play the same characters in a new venue for season two.

Casting will be announced at a later date.