House of Cards Final Season Will Shoot in 2018
“The road to power is paved with hypocrisy and casualties,” ex-President Frank Underwood said on House of Cards, long before laying the groundwork for the show’s impeachment. But Netflix hasn’t shut down the government. It is bringing in the next incumbent. The streaming service announced House of Cards will resume shooting its final season in early 2018. Production was suspended in October after sexual assault allegations were made against its star and producer Kevin Spacey.
“We were really excited we could get to an agreement… for the conclusion of the show,” chief content officer Ted Sarandos told UBS’s Global Media and Communications Conference in New York.
The final eight episodes will still star Robin Wright as Claire Underwood, the 47th and current President of the United States, but won’t include Spacey.
“It only takes ten seconds to crush a man’s ambitions,” the recently elected President Underwood said in season 3. The announcement that House of Cards season 6 will be its finale was made within 24 hours of Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp’s allegations that Spacey made a sexual advance at him when he was 14 years old more than 30 years ago. According to published reports, the cancellation notification had already been planned a month ago and was not a response to the claims.
House of Cards creator Beau Willimon called Rapp’s story “deeply troubling.” He said he never “witnessed nor was aware of any inappropriate behavior on set or off.” He added that he takes “reports of such behavior seriously and this is no exception.”
“Media Rights Capital and Netflix are deeply troubled by last night’s news concerning Kevin Spacey,” Netflix announced in a statement. “In response to last night’s revelations, executives from both of our companies arrived in Baltimore this afternoon to meet with our cast and crew to ensure that they continue to feel safe and supported. As previously scheduled, Kevin Spacey is not working on set at this time.”
Spacey said he was “beyond horrified to hear [Rapp’s] story,” in a statement at the time. “I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”
Spacey’s statement also addressed his own sexuality. “I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man,” Spacey said.
The actor was criticized for using the apology as his platform for coming out.
“Coming-out stories should not be used to deflect from allegations of sexual assault,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said.
House of Cards was the streaming service’s first scripted series when it premiered in 2013. The series was nominated for multiple Emmy Awards. Spacey and costar Robin Wright both won Golden Globes.
House of Cards Season 6 Possible Release Date
We would have expected House of Cards Season 6 to arrive in summer of 2018, but given the ongoing production delays, when (or if) the show will continue is anybody’s guess.
House of Cards Season 6 Story Details
Since it seems unlikely that House of Cards Season 6 will continue Frank Underwood’s story in any meaningful way, we now need to figure out if any of these earlier story hints still mean anything at all.
While speaking about President Claire Underwood with The Hollywood Reporter, Pugilese said, “Now that she’s become more ambitious, or actually just more pronounced with her ambitions openly about what she wants, her complicity is going to be different than Francis’ complicity. How does she manifest her ambitions in that complicity that she’s looking for in the audience and eventually the voter?”
Robin Wright also spoke with the trade about Claire in a potential new season, saying she imagines Claire will be the best president ever depicted on House of Cards. With that said, Wright added, “How she gets there and achieves that is a whole other thing regarding the opera of the show.”
Showrunner Gibson meanwhile told TV Line: “We were trying, in a disciplined way, to navigate that shift at the end of last season [when Claire first talked to the camera] and not overplay it [this season]. But I think it’s inevitable that that will need to be explored further [in season 6].”
