Annabel Jones & Charlie Brooker
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‘Black Mirror’ creator, executive producer, and showrunner Charlie Brooker and collaborator/producer/co-showrunner Annabel Jones have left their production label House of Tomorrow, which was set up at Endemol Shine Group.  The duo are continuing negotiations for a deal directly with Netflix, which currently houses ‘Black Mirror’.  Actually, as reported by Deadline, Brooker and Jones gave notice at Endemol Shine last year, but their notice period wrapped up on Friday.  Brooker served as House of Tomorrow’s creative director, while Jones acted as managing director.

Endemol Shine is in the process of being bought out by Banijay Group, which is reportedly paying $2.2 billion for the company.  This may be why Brooker and Jones jumped shipped.

 

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What does this mean for ‘Black Mirror’?  Well, in all honesty, it may mean that the series is finished.  Endemol Shine keeps the rights to the anthology series, after Brooker’s departure.  It’s possible that a new deal could be negotiated for Brooker and Jones to return to produce more installments of ‘Black Mirror’, but with this pending deal with Netflix, they may wind up creating a new similar anthology show specifically for the streaming service.

‘Black Mirror’ first aired on Great Britain’s Channel 4 but was distributed internationally by Netflix.  In 2015, Netflix purchased the rights to the show and became its sole distributor.  The anthology has won six Emmy Awards for the episodes “San Junipero” and “USS Callister.”  Other episodes have been nominated and won other accolades.  There have been a total of 22 ‘Black Mirror’ episodes, spanning five seasons.  In 2018, Netflix also released a stand-alone movie, ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’ which utilized an innovative “choose your own adventure” feature, which resulted in it becoming an online sensation.

However, it has seemed for a while that ‘Black Mirror’ might be running out of steam.  The last season consisted of only three episodes.  (Keep in mind, ‘Black Mirror’ episodes are more like stand-alone movies than typical TV installments.)

Brooker and Jones established House of Tomorrow under the aegis of Endemol Shine in 2014.  Before that, they were aligned with the company’s comedic wing, Zeppotron, under which they crafted the first two seasons of ‘Black Mirror’, as well as Sky’s ‘A Touch of Cloth’ and BBC’s ‘Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe’.

It looks as though whatever happens, Brooker and Jones will set up a deal at Netflix, so we’ll see more from their imaginations.  But this may or may not be the end of ‘Black Mirror’.

Will you be sad to see it go?

 

Source: Deadline