Fox and National Geographic have announced that the Emmy-winning series Cosmos will return for a second season, premiering in 2019. The 13-episode series, subtitled Possible Worlds, will again be hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Seth MacFarlane (The Orville) will return as executive producer, as will producer/writer/director Ann Druyan, who won an Emmy award for writing and a Peabody award for producing the 2014 season.
The original Carl Sagan series from 1980 was, at the time, the most successful public television series ever made. The reboot in 2014, called Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, not only covered astronomical phenomena but also profiles of little-known scientists.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a world-renowned astrophysicist, head of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and recipient of the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. He also hosts the popular podcast StarTalk in between his numerous television appearances.
A SpaceTime Oddyssey was the most-watched series internationally ever on National Geographic. The new season will arrive in Spring 2019 and it will air on Fox here in the U.S. and on National Geographic worldwide.
Deadline reports that the two networks originally teamed up on the reboot, due to their corporate relationship within the Fox Networks. They will continue to collaborate on the new season, even as the two networks are going their own separate ways. National Geographic is one of the 21st Century Fox assets that are being sold to Disney as part of their $52 billion mega deal.
The first season of the series was well-received, and the new season promises to “venture to previously uncharted territories.”
National Geographic will also publish a companion book Cosmos: Possible Worlds by Ann Druyan, who’s also Carl Sagan’s widow. The book is a follow-up to the Sagan bestseller Cosmos: A Personal Voyage published in 1980, which is one of the top-selling science books of all time.
“When isn’t it the right time to bring Cosmos back?” executive producer Brannon Braga asked at New York Comic-Con in 2014 when discussing the revival of the series. “There are always dark forces of irrational thinking. Science is always relevant. Reality is relevant. Nature is relevant. A believable view of the world that is real is relevant.”
