“Black Mirror” renewed for season 7

“Black Mirror” returns for a seventh season, Variety understand.

The hit sci-fi series created by Charlie Brooker returned to screens earlier this year after a four-year hiatus, seeing record viewership on Netflix. According to the streamer, it reached the Top 10 in 92 countries and spent 4 weeks in Netflix’s global top 10 for English-speaking television.

No casting has yet been confirmed for season 7 but Variety It appears the series is set to go into production later this year with Brooker, Annabel Jones and Jessica Rhodes set to return as executive producers. Plot details and number of episodes are still being kept under wraps.

The five-part season 6 featured a slew of A-list names, including Salma Hayek, Annie Murphy, Aaron Paul, Josh Hartnett, and Paapa Essiedu, among others. Season 5 consisted of only three episodes and starred Andrew Scott, Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Topher Grace and Miley Cyrus.

The rights to “Black Mirror” are complicated, which partly explains the delay between seasons 5 and 6. Brooker and his creative partner Jones left their production company, Enedemol Shine-backed House of Tomorrow, in January 2020 to move to Netflix. under a new production banner called Broke and Bones. But under the terms of their deal, the rights to “Black Mirror” remained with Endemol Shine, which was acquired by Banijay Group in 2020. Banijay Rights licenses the show to Netflix.

The dystopian series has often been credited for predicting the future in the most depressing ways. The most recent season, which launched in June, opened with an episode on a streaming service called Streamberry, which co-opted people’s lives in real time using AI to turn them into shows for its platform. Brooker said Variety the episode was written before the ChatGPT AI program became national news (WGA and SAG-AFTRA negotiations included the permitted use and scope of AI).

“I’m worried about making a living – that’s generally what I do – and I’m very worried about AI and the use of ChatGPT and things like that,” he said at a rally in London in support of the writers’ strike earlier this year. “It particularly concerns me, that’s why I’m here.” When asked if the episode was therefore another example of “Black Mirror” predicting the future, he replied: “Unfortunately, in this case.”