[WATCH] ‘Black Monday’ Has Endless Material For A Potential Season 3: Contenders

The creators behind the Showtime comedy Black Monday won’t have a hard time finding inspiration for Season 3.

Written by David Caspe and Jordan Cahan, the series takes viewers back to October 19, 1987, aka Black Monday, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost almost 22% in a single day. To this day, no one knows who caused it — until now. The show looks at a group of outsiders who took on the blue-blood, old-boys club of Wall Street and ended up crashing the world’s largest financial system, a Lamborghini limousine and the glass ceiling.

During a panel at Deadline’s Contenders Television virtual event, Don Cheadle, who stars as the self-destructive banker Maurice Monroe, joined Senior Editor/Chief TV Critic Dominic Patten to dialogue about source material for a potential Season 3, albeit with no spoilers.

“Unfortunately, there’s no dearth of stock market downturns, crashes, recessions to talk about between then and now,” Cheadle said. “If we jump forward to the ’90s, we can see [what] would be fun to do with the fashion and music — those are always such huge elements to the show — so I think we can go anywhere. But as far as where the characters are going to go, who knows? [Cheadle’s] Mo is sitting over his empire; he’s got spray paint on the wall. Blair [Andrew Rannells] has a dead senator in the background of his life. Paul Scheer [who plays Keith Shankar], he’s in jail. Dawn [Regina Hall] takes the whole hit for the stock market crash. I think once again we’re blown out of the water, so who knows.”

Cheadle also spoke of the extraordinary events of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd, and their impact on film and TV projects developed now, which will we will see over the next couple of years.

“This is a moment in history that none of us have ever seen before — dead or alive today — haven’t lived through this kind of supercharged moment, supercharged by the Internet, supercharged by social media, supercharged by our ability to know what has happened across the world in two seconds,” he said. “I’m really excited to see what is going to come out in 1-2 years.”

Black Monday is a co-production of Showtime and Sony Pictures TV. David Caspe, Jordan Cahan, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg executive produce. Andrew Rannells, Regina Hall and Paul Scheer also star.

Check out the video above, and click here to watch all of Sunday’s Contenders TV panels.