EXCLUSIVE: The long awaited third season of HBO‘s star-studded series Big Little Lies has taken a major step forward with the hire of Mr. & Mrs. Smith co-creator, executive producer and showrunner Francesca Sloane to write the first episode of Season 3, currently in development at the premium network, Deadline has learned. She will executive produce the new installment with series creator David. E. Kelley and stars Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman. It falls under an exclusive two-year overall deal Sloane has signed with HBO.
Sloane is moving to HBO from Amazon MGM Studios where she had been under overall deals since 2020 and co-created with Donald Glover the breakout drama series Mr. & Mrs. Smith. She has served as executive producer and showrunner on the series, whose previously greenlighted second season has been delayed indefinitely.
The writer hire signals a likely double doze of good news for Big Little Lies fans. Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max Content, said last fall that he and his team were waiting for Liane Moriarty’s sequel book before moving forward with a third season of the hit thriller.
Moriarty’s followup to her 2014 Big Little Lies novel, on which the Emmy-winning first season of the HBO series was based, is believed to be finished and will be published in 2026. She has revealed that it features a time jump with the women at the center of the story now moms of teenagers.
The deal with Sloane caps an extensive search HBO launched this summer for a Big Little Liars Season 3 writer. It resulted in a bake-off among a half dozen established writers/writing teams.
Sloane is not believed to have been part of that process. She had been set to return as showrunner for Season 2 and has spoken about her love and commitment to Mr. & Mrs. Smith. But with her latest Amazon MGM Studios deal coming to an end as Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s second season was put on an indefinite hold over what I hear were cast issues, Sloane and the studio engaged in lengthy conversations about what her new pact would look like, sources said.
Most overall deals these days are tied to a show, and with the one Sloane has been attached to at Amazon MGM Studios in limbo, the proposed financial terms are said to have been below her previous pact.
As a result, she opted to explore the marketplace, fielding a lot of interest, including from HBO for Big Little Lies, which led led to her overall deal at the network.
Big Little Liars was a critical and ratings hit when it launched in 2017 as a limited series. A second season, based on original material, followed in 2019, with Kelley as writer/executive producer of both installments.
News of BLL getting a third season first began percolating when Kidman let it slip in November 2023 that a continuation of the seaside-set crime drama was starting to come together at HBO. A couple of months prior, fellow BLL executive producer Bruna Papandrea told Deadline that there was an effort to continue the story but the sudden 2021 death of Big Little Lies executive producer/Season 1 director Jean-Marc Vallée was “a devastating blow” to everyone involved that left “a big hole” and “made us all pause.”
BLL stars Witherspoon, Kidman, Zoë Kravitz, Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley who all had spoken publicly about their desire to return for a third season, along with Kelley. The cast of the series also includes Alexander Skarsgård, Adam Scott, James Tupper, Jeffrey Nordling as well as Meryl Streep in Season 2.
The first season, about five Monterey, CA women embroiled in a homicide investigation, won 8 Emmy Awards out of 16 nominations, including Outstanding Limited Series, a directing award for Vallée and acting trophies for Kidman, Skarsgård, and Dern.
Sloane and Glover shared in two Emmy nominations — Outstanding Drama Series and Writing for a Drama Series — and three WGA Award nominations for Season 1 of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which earned a total of 16 Emmy noms, winning two categories, including Guest Actress In A Drama Series for Michaela Coel.
She previously worked on Glover’s FX’s Atlanta, Fargo and The First. Sloane began her career on the staff of Veena Sud’s Seven Seconds and Startup. She is repped by WME, Sugar23 and Yorn Levine Barnes.
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