New season of ‘Atlanta’ set to premiere in March
The hit FX series starring Donald Glover and Brian Tyree Henry is back after a nearly four-year hiatus
New episodes of Atlanta are returning to FX early next year — nearly four years after the show’s season 2 finale.
Season 3 of the critically acclaimed dramedy, starring Brian Tyree Henry as up-and-coming rapper Al “Paper Boi” Miles and modern-day renaissance man Donald Glover as his cousin and manager, Earnest “Earn” Marks, is set to begin airing on FX on March 24, according to the show’s Twitter account.
FX Entertainment President Eric Schrier recently told The Hollywood Reporter that his network is thrilled to finally get Atlanta back up and running.
“Once again, Donald Glover, the producers and stellar cast have delivered another signature season synonymous with the excellence that makes Atlanta so great,” Schrier told the trade mag in a story published Wednesday night.
Atlanta tells the story of three Black men trying to rise through the ranks of the southern city’s famous hip-hop music scene as they contend with its challenging, sometimes dangerous, and often hilarious pitfalls.
Glover’s character is a single father who opts to manage his cousin’s rap career instead of going to college. Henry’s breakout role has him struggling to balance his loyalty to Earn and his career ambitions while trying to avoid getting killed by greedy and jealous rivals who want to turn him into a statistic.
Season 3 takes place in Europe, where Earn, Paper Boi, Darius (played by LaKeith Stanfield), and Van, the mother of Earn’s daughter (played by Zazie Beetz), are enjoying a successful tour, according to THR.
The quartet struggles to adapt to their sudden success while maneuvering as outsiders in their new environment. The upcoming season is a long time coming for FX, which hoped to air season 3 in 2019 after giving producers the green light in June 2018.
At the time, Glover was busy with several projects, including playing a young Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars movie Solo and lending his voice to Simba in Disney’s 2019 CGI remake of The Lion King.
FX chief John Landgraf blamed Glover’s packed schedule and other factors in Glover’s personal life for the show’s delays in 2019.
“Donald Glover is sort of the king of all media, and he just has had an incredibly complicated life,” Landgraf told THR at the time.
“One of the things that is just a reality of television today is you have to wait,” he continued. “I wish for the fans as well as for us that we could get everything back on an annual basis but, again, you just have to make a decision about quantity over quality at a certain point — and we’re just erring on the side of quality.”
Atlanta became a huge hit for FX after its September 2016 debut. The show has won five Emmy Awards and received a total of 22 Emmy nominations while raising the profiles of Glover, Henry, and their co-stars Stanfield and Beetz.
Season 4 of the series was greenlit in August 2019, according to THR, but no timetable has been set for its premiere.
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