'HIJACK' SEASON 2: RELEASE DATE, CAST AND SPOILERS

There’s one good reason they never made a sequel to Snakes on a Plane* — the movie's title left them with nowhere to go.

That’s the problem with does-exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin titles. Unlike, say, Speed or Die Hard or Under Siege, whose titles were loose enough to leave some wiggle room for story development, Snakes on a Plane II (The Long Hiss Goodnight?) could not have been about anything but more muthafuckin’ snakes on more muthafuckin’ planes.

Hijack, the Idris Elba vehicle from last year, is in the same boat (or plane). How do you make a sequel to a TV show with such a scenario-specific title, without doing the exact same thing again? Well, we will soon find out.

Apple TV+ has announced that season two of the hit eight-parter is in the works. Fine. Only, last year, Elba said he’d only do a second series if it wasn’t about another hijacking.

“I’m open to that character coming back. I think if people were compelled to like the character, then I’m in,” Elba told Variety in June last year. “But it’s kind of like — he’s not a cop [so] what would be the acceptable Sam Nelson return? And if I’m honest, I’m not sure. I’d like that, but I just don’t want to put him on another hijack.”

Apple TV's marketing team should really have thought this through. In hindsight, they should've just kept their options open and gone with The Corporate Business Negotiator after all.

Anyway, right now, the details of season two are about as unclear as plans for Heathrow's third runway.

So, what do we know about Hijack season two so far?

*Incidentally, there is a film called Snakes on a Train, but it cannot be called a sequel as, coincidentally, it came out exactly two days before Snakes on a Plane's general release, on August 15, 2006.

What was season one about?

As discussed, the title does almost all of the synopsis’ heavy lifting. A group of home-grown hijackers (not terrorists, as is made abundantly clear later) overrun a flight from Dubai to London for reasons that will soon emerge (not terrorism!).

The Dubai bit is important because Idris’ character, Sam Nelson, is not an off-duty SAS hero, detective or spy roped reluctantly into saving the day. He is a corporate business negotiator with a tongue so silver it could kill Dracula in one lick. Whether he’s persuading an insouciant posho in the next seat to turn down the volume of his video game, or a hijacker to listen to his reasonable proposals, Sam is a man who can get things sorted. Which, across the seven-hour flight, he succeeds in various ways.

It's a rollicking ride, if you can suspend your disbelief at around 30,000 feet. Indeed, in the hands of a less screen-fillable actor, the plot could well spin out of control. But with Elba in the cockpit (at times, literally), it’s gripping and claustrophobic and brilliantly bingeable.

What will season two be about?

All we really know is that Elba doesn't want Hijack season two to be about a hijack. In Apple TV+’s press release announcing the follow-up, he didn’t go much deeper.

“It’s top secret what new situation unfolds for Sam Nelson but I can assure you we will bring the high octane back,” he teased unsatisfyingly.

So, it’s probably not going to be about a plane highjack. They could swap the plane for a train to maintain claustrophobic tension, perhaps, but that’s just the same story inside another type of fast-moving metal tube.

"Look, I’m going to be honest here. I’d like to see Sam come back, but I just don’t want to see another Hijack," he told TV Insider last year. "It’s got to be clever, and we can see him make decisions that are impossible to make."

The key plot device here is that Sam is a corporate business negotiator who knows his way around a fair deal. So it would need to involve some high-stakes negotiating. An international political crisis, perhaps? Or a cyber-attack threatening to wipe out Britain’s banking infrastructure? An environmental disaster could disrupt Elba’s beach holiday before he’s dragged into a nefarious corporate cover-up led by slimy executives who’ll stop at nothing to protect their profits. Or, why not go all the way and plant Sam in the middle of an alien invasion where he must negotiate intergalactic peace and save humanity?

Right now, speculation is all we have.

Who will star?

The show doesn’t work without Idris Elba, so he’s in. Further details are thin.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Toby Jones (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), Lisa Vicari (Dark), and Christiane Paul (Vampire Sisters) have all signed up.

On top of them, Variety says Top Boy’s Clare-Hope Ashitey, Karima McAdams (Dune: Prophecy) and Christian Näthe (Ballon) are all set to join the action.

What roles they’ll play has not been revealed.

As for the production team, it remains largely the same as the first season with co-creator Jim Field Smith (The Wrong Mans, Litvinenko) directing, and Elba producing.

When will it be released?

It is understood that filming began last month in an unknown location. Elba has said he expected that to last until the end of the year so summer 2025 could be a good bet for its release on Apple TV+.

2024-06-28T09:06:18Z dg43tfdfdgfd