'Billions' Season 3 Renewal, News Details: Showtime CEO Confirms New Installment
Showtime renewed its political Wall Street drama, "Billions," for a third season. The announcement was made barely a month after the second season of the show debuted with good ratings.
The show, which airs right after another popular Showtime offering, "Homeland," managed to gather over 2.99 million views by January 2016 for its first season, which made it the network's best-performing debut series ever.
Created by Brian Koppelman, David Levien and Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Billions" follows an ambitious hedge fund manager Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis), who uses dirty trading tactics and bribery to grow his firm, and Charles "Chuck" Rhoades Jr. (Paul Giamatti), an attorney who has a particular distaste for wealthy criminals.
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The characters are loosely based on a real-life U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, and his legal battles with a hedge fund manager of SAC Capital, Steve Cohen.
"It offers a unique mix of pure entertainment with sly commentary on our current have/have-not economy," says Showtime president David Nevins, according to Deadline.
Nevins also said that "Billions" continues to have a rising popularity both among audiences and in critical and social relevance. The executive further teased that "Season 2 is off to a tremendous start, and has only whetted our audience's appetite for what will come in Season 3."
In a report from The Hollywood Reporter, the show garnered a total of 4.4 million viewers to date. The show's strong viewership is thanks in part to Showtime's streaming sampling before season 2's actual television debut, which gathered around 1.6 million viewers.
Season 2 continues the battle between Bobby and Chuck - it's a thing between law versus money, along with power struggles and a penchant for personal domination.
Aside from Lewis and Giamatti, the show also stars Maggie Siff as Chuck's wife, Wendy; Malin Akerman as Bobby's wife, Lara; David Costabile as Mike Wagner, Bobby's right-hand man; Condola Rashad as Kate; and Toby Leonard Moore as Bryan.
"Billions" airs every Sunday, 10 p.m. EDT, on Showtime.
