#EP on developing potential movie alternative

Earlier this week, we wrote that Manifest showrunner Jeff Rake may be considering something different than a traditional season 4 — a farewell movie. After it, it may be the only option left. NBC canceled the drama earlier this month and soon after, Netflix decided not to pick it up in spite of its excellent performance there. We’re a little confused about that, but it serves as yet another that the streaming service really isn’t in the business of saving shows anymore.

Will someone out there be interested in picking this movie up? That remains to be seen but speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Rake laid out what he’s trying to accomplish here:

Twenty days after we’ve premiered on Netflix, I’ve kind of moved away from the plan of finding a home for seasons 4, 5, and 6 of Manifest, even though I’ve always talked about Manifest being a six-season show. Back in the day, I laid out a six-season roadmap for NBC, and I’m halfway through. I had giant cliffhangers in the season 3 finale, so I had every intention to have three more seasons to slow-burn the back half of the story. I’m reading the writing on the wall that we may not find a home for three more seasons of the show, so I moved to plan B: Some platform would bankroll a feature or a movie finale, like we saw with Timeless, Firefly, and Deadwood. I just need a modest budget to tell the story. I am personally sketching out how to consolidate the back half of the series into a much more streamlined, cut-to-the-chase two-hour finale that would distill all of the hanging chads of the series. That’s where my head is at. There is a huge appetite for people wanting to know what’s that end of the story, what happened to the passengers, what ultimately happened to that airplane.

It may sound counterintuitive in a way, but we actually think that NBC may be the best home for a movie farewell — they opted to do this with Timeless after first canceling it, and they already have an infrastructure in place for delivering on this particular story. It’s a little harder at a place that wasn’t previously the show’s home — will the juice of one movie be worth the trouble of picking it up?

Hopefully, we hear of a proper solution over the next month; if there is some sort of Manifest movie on the way, we’d love to see it before the end of this year.

Do you think there’s a chance that a Manifest farewell film could happen?

Be sure to share right now in the comments! Once you do that, stick around for other updates. (Photo: NBC.)

This article was written by Jess Carter. Be sure to follow her on Twitter.