HBO Explains Why ‘Sharp Objects’ Won’t Come Back For Season 2

Gillian Flynn has effortlessly made the leap from novelist to screenwriter over the past five years. She turned heads as a writer with the New York Times Best Seller “Gone Girl.” In 2014, she impressively pulled double duty, adapting her novel for the screen for David Fincher to direct and Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, and Neil Patrick Harris to star in. And Flynn did such a fine job with that script, “Gone Girl” earned her a Golden Globe” nomination for Best Screenplay. The rest, as the saying goes, was history. Her latest novel adapted for the visual arts was “Sharp Objects,” the eight-episode HBO limited series, that she is again adapting herself.

Although the series had strong viewership and received critical acclaim, holding a score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, showrunner Marti Noxon just announced that there will be no season two and that viewers should “bask in it while you can.” Though “Big Little Lies,” also originally planned as a limited series, ventured away from its source material for a second season, “Sharp Objects” will stick to covering Flynn’s original story for one season only.

“I felt this one in particular did feel like it needed more than two hours,” Flynn explained at a panel at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour (via The Wrap). “It did need that length, again, just to make sure that Camille and her story and that character study didn’t get lost within the mystery itself. As you saw, we don’t even get to what Camille’s particular issue is…until the end of the first episode.”

Flynn believes an eight-episode limited series was the perfect format and length to tell Camille’s (played by Amy Adams) character arc. However, HBO programming chief Casey Bloys thinks the decision to forgo a season 2 also may have had something to do with the subject matter.

“I’ll tell you the difference. For ‘Big Little Lies,’ Reese [Witherspoon], Nicole [Kidman], Laura [Dern], Shailene [Woodley], and Zoe [Kravitz] — they all wanted to do it again,” Bloys said. “As you know, the show is dark, and Amy’s character is very dark. It’s a difficult role for an actress to play. I believe she doesn’t want to play that character again, which I completely understand. It’s a lot to take on, and without her I just don’t see it. I think this is one where you gotta say, ‘We got a fantastic limited series, and we’ll leave it at that.'”

It looks as though it may just be a matter of Noxon, Flynn, and Adams being satisfied with one excellent, fulfilling season. As for Adams, if it’s true that she doesn’t want to venture into a dark place again for a while after being in Camille’s shoes, that’s entirely understandable. Adams is such an intuitive and sympathetic actor, and inhabiting such a dark character for an extended period of time can undoubtedly take its toll on anyone in the industry.

So, per the words of Noxon, let’s just “bask” in Adams’ wonderful portrayal of Flynn’s Camille, rather than mourn the absence of a season two of “Sharp Objects.”