"Altered Carbon" season 2 will finally begin filming on Feb. 4 with a new lead star. "Avengers" and "Captain America" actor Anthony Mackie will assume the role of Takeshi Kovacs after Joel Kinnaman played the role in the first season.
The Netflix futuristic drama series will be back at the Skydance Studios in Surrey to work on the second season, according to the Vancouver Sun. This was the same studio that housed the first season cast and crew of "Altered Carbon" when they started working on the show in 2016.
Set 360 years into the future, "Altered Carbon" centers on a former elite force envoy (Kovacs) who had to be recalled from service to solve a murder. Only, it's hard to trace the crime since, in this dystopian future, people are able to store their consciousness and memories in "slacks" so that their identities can still be transferred to different bodies or "sleeves" even after their death.
At least four people became the sleeves of Kovacs during the course of the first season. Aside from Kinnaman, Will Yun Lee, Bryon Mann and Morgan Gao also played the character.
Last July 2018, Netflix renewed "Altered Carbon" for a second season and also announced Mackie as the show's new lead. Showrunner Laeta Kalogridis will also be sharing the workload of crafting the big-budgeted television series with a new co-showrunner, Alison Schapker ("Scandal").
Replacing Kinnaman as the lead of "Altered Carbon" season 2 did not come as shock since the actor always had a one-year contract with the series. At the end of "Altered Carbon" season 1, his character had to surrender his current sleeve so that authorities could transfer his consciousness again.
However, the drama series did not reveal the new sleeve until the confirmation of "Altered Carbon" season 2. Instead, viewers of the series only saw a silhouette of the man who's now Kovac's new identity.
The first season closely followed the book source written by Richard K. Morgan. The author wrote a follow-up in "Broken Angels" but Kalogridis, as the showrunner, told Entertainment Weekly that the structure of "Altered Carbon" season 2 might be different from the books.
Kalogridis said that the second book delved on space battles, warships and giant portals. To faithfully recreate these into a TV show would be expensive. So, fans of the cyberpunk drama series might have to settle for a variation.
Netflix released "Altered Carbon" season 1 last February 2018 and it's still accessible on the streaming platform. The second season might likely launch in early 2020.
