Manifest is doing its best to ready Season 4 for takeoff, in the event that ongoing talks with Netflix about “saving” the cancelled NBC drama prove successful .
As reported by our sister site Deadline (though both Netflix and producer Warner Bros. TV declined to comment), Manifest producers are scrambling to make deals with cast members (whose contract options expired in June) and writers past and new, in the event that a deal is sealed for the streaming giant to give Season 4 a home.
Netflix of course and quite famously pulled off similar when, three years ago, it renewed Fox castoff Lucifer — also a WBTV production — for a fourth (and then fifth and sixth) season. (Saving Manifest, Deadline notes, presents similar complications as Lucifer did, seeing as its global rights, as well as worldwide rights to all existing seasons, were already promised elsewhere.)
This latest development comes two months after NBC grounded the supernatural-tinged family drama following a cliffhanger-filled Season 3 finale.
All the while, Manifest stayed airborne in the pop culture conversation, by rapidly ascending and topping the Nielsen streaming charts, and also by claiming the No. 1 spot on Netflix’s own popularity poll for a near-record 27 straight days. It was shortly after the latter feat that rumblings grew louder that a beyond-last-minute save by NBC and or Netflix was in the works; NBCU has since dropped out of the conversation, leaving Netflix as the lone possible savior.
At that time that Manifest was grounded, series creator Jeff Rake shared with fans, I’m devastated by NBC’s decision to cancel us,” adding: “That we’ve been shut down in the middle [of a planned six-season run] is a gut punch to say the least. Hoping to find a new home. You the fans deserve an ending to your story.”
In the weeks that followed, Rake would reassure Manifesters — a la “We’re trying to find a way to conclude the series. Could take a week, a month, a year. But we’re not giving up” — all as he angled to find someone to A) finance at the very least a two-hour wrap-up movie and B) offer a home to same.
Among the twists that fans were left to process at the close of Manifest‘s double-episode Season 3 finale (SPOILER ALERT!): Recently discovered 828er Angelina (fatally?) stabbed Grace in the course of kidnapping her “guardian angel” baby Eden; young Cal vanished into thin air upon touching the tail fin, then later reappeared at home a full five years older; Captain Daly materialized inside the 828 cockpit at Eureka, moments before the entire plane disappeared with a flash of light; and Michaela and Zeke looked to be on the verge of a break-up talk.
