“Black Mirror” is coming back for a seventh season, Variety understands.
The hit sci-fi show created by Charlie Brooker returned to screens earlier this year after a four-year hiatus, garnering record viewing numbers on Netflix. According to the streamer, it reached the Top 10 in 92 countries and spent 4 weeks in Netflix’s global top 10 English-speaking TV.
No casting has been confirmed yet for Season 7 but Variety understands the show is set to go into production later this year with Brooker, Annabel Jones and Jessica Rhoades believed to be returning as executive producers. Plot details and number of episodes are still being kept under wraps.
Season 6, which consisted of five parts, featured a host of A-list names including Salma Hayek, Annie Murphy, Aaron Paul, Josh Hartnett and Paapa Essiedu among others. Season 5 was comprised of only three instalments and starred Andrew Scott, Anthony Mackie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Topher Grace and Miley Cyrus.
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The rights to “Black Mirror” are complicated, which partly accounted for the delay between Seasons 5 and 6. Brooker and creative partner Jones left their production company, the Enedemol Shine-backed House of Tomorrow, in January 2020 to set up shop at Netflix under a new production banner called Broke and Bones. But under the terms of their deal the rights to “Black Mirror” stayed 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 with predicting the future in the most depressing ways. The most recent season, which dropped in June, opened with an episode about a streaming service called Streamberry which was co-opting people’s lives in real-time using AI to turn them into shows for its platform. Brooker told Variety the episode was written before AI program ChatGPT became national news (both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA negotiations included permitted use and scope of AI).
“I worry for a living — it’s generally what I do— and I’m very worried about AI and the use of ChatGPT and things like that,” he said during a London rally in support of the writers strike earlier this year. “That’s a particular concern to me, so 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.”
