Peacock’s Those About To Die Won’t Return For Season 2

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There won’t be another chapter of Those About to Die.

Peacock’s new series, Those About to Die, which premiered in July 2024, blends the epic action of Gladiator with the political intrigue of Game of Thrones. Starring Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins as Emperor Vaspasian, the ten-episode show explores life in the Roman Empire and examines how sports, power, and lasting fame were intertwined through the stories of various characters.

In a recent interview with Deadline, executive producer Stuart Ford addressed the possibility of a second season for Those About to Die. He stated that a renewal is “probably not” going to happen, explaining that the show didn’t attract enough viewers to justify continuing it on Peacock.

Stuart Ford says a second season is unlikely. While the show was a big international success, it didn’t attract enough viewers on Peacock to cover its high production costs, which is disappointing.

The new Peacock series, Those About to Die, got a boost from the Olympics after its release. Just days after it premiered in late July, it landed at number 6 on Nielsen’s Top 10 list, though it only garnered 399 minutes of viewing time in the U.S. The show is based on a book by Daniel P. Mannix, with a script by Robert Rodat and direction from Roland Emmerich and Marco Kreuzpaintner.

Despite the show having ten episodes all released at once – each nearly an hour long – total viewership numbers, as measured by Nielsen in minutes watched, were surprisingly low. Generally, more minutes viewed indicates a larger audience, and this is particularly true for shows designed to be binge-watched or major streaming successes like Reacher and Bridgerton.

I’m really hoping we get a second season of Those About to Die! Director Roland Emmerich – you probably know him from big blockbusters like Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow – has hinted that if it happens, they could really shake things up. He’s talked about exploring different timelines and showing the story from multiple points of view, which sounds incredibly exciting to me.

The historical drama Those About to Die, featuring a large cast including Iwan Rheon (from Game of Thrones), Sara Martins, Tom Hughes, Jojo Macari, Moe Hashim, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Rupert Penry-Jones, and Gabriella Pession (known for Tell Me Lies), was available for streaming on Prime Video worldwide.

Okay, so this movie was a bit of a mixed bag. It landed at around 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, which isn’t terrible, but not amazing either. What reviewers seemed to agree on was that it definitely felt like those big historical epics we love – think Gladiator – hitting all the right notes for fans of the genre. But, and this is a big ‘but’, a lot of them felt the characters weren’t really fleshed out, and the story just didn’t quite deliver a powerful, satisfying ending. It just kind of… fizzled out, which was a real shame.

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2026-05-14 16:08