‘Black Mirror’ Creators Talk Season 4 and Possible Episode Sequels
The creators of Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, sat down to talk on Variety’s podcast Remote Controlled, about the inspiration for Black Mirror and its upcoming season.
The Netflix original sci-fi anthology series has garnered critical acclaim for its first three seasons and was nominated for three Emmys in 2017:
Outstanding Television Movie (San Junipero)
Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or a Dramatic Special (San Junipero)
Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited Series or Movie. (Nosedive)
Charlie Brooker talked about how episode ideas are sometimes conceived through comedic “what-if” scenarios as well as a desire to cover a breadth of different genres and stated that Season 4 will attempt to embrace even more genres.
Annabel Jones said that the anthology format is a joy which lends creative freedom to the writing process as they sometimes have no idea where a story is going to go. Brooker jokingly added, “as we often say about the show, it’s like a box of chocolates in terms of variety, but they’re all dark chocolates.”
Pictured: San Junipero is nominated for two Emmys.
Brooker continued on to say that the real challenge in writing Black Mirror is staying ahead of the tumultuous and widly more unbelievable real world. On being inspired by real world news and politics, Brooker notes that it is not a viable option “because things are changing so much at the moment, you kind of need a bit of dust to settle, because any crazy idea I could think up this morning about the state of the world could be out of date by lunch.”
On its use of technology Jones and Brooker note that it ‘essentially serves as magic in the series’. Jones thinks that the reason the technologically inspired episodes resonate with the audience is because it seems plausible, “they look at it and think, ‘I could see myself using that technology, I could see myself embracing that,’ and then getting hooked in as we all do, to the sexiness of technology and the ease.” Brooker also mentioned his worry about the influence of technology on the world although he isn’t a total cynic, “things like social media, that’s like a new limb that we’ve grown as a species and we’re learning how to use it, I hope that we’ll just acclimatize and get used to that.”
Finally, Charlie Brooker discussed the possibility of sequels to some of the previous Black Mirror episodes:
“We’ve had ideas for sequels as well, which is something we haven’t entirely explored. I wouldn’t be averse to it. We’ve got a couple ideas in mind, but we’re sort of thinking about, practically, how we could do that and when the right time to do that would be, so potentially. But then in a Darwinian way, a new idea pops up and that wins the knife fight for the slot.”
Jones jokes about Brooker saying ‘as long as you remain a nervous wreck, we’ll be fine.” in regards to ideas for future episodes.
You can listen to the full discussion over at Variety.
Source: Variety, Featured Image via Variety.
