Black Lightning is getting another season.
During the bi-annual Television Critics Association, The CW renewed Black Lightning and nine other shows including The Flash, Arrow, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
“This season, we expanded our primetime schedule to six nights with the addition of Sunday — which has been an unqualified success for the network, our affiliates, and our advertisers,” said CW president Mark Pedowitz.
He continued: “In addition to growing our schedule across the week, we also continue to add more year-round programming. The early renewal of these signature CW series gives us a head start on laying out the 2019-2020 season, and this is just the beginning. These shows provide a strong foundation for our multiplatform programming strategy, and we look forward to building on this with even more returning and new shows as we approach the May upfront.”
Black Lightning stars Cress Williams as a vigilante superhero and educator who helps the people of Freeland.
CW president Mark Pedowitz said on Thursday that Black Lightning showrunner Salim Akil’s legal issues have nothing to do with the DC Comics show, calling them as a “personal issue.”
“He has a personal issue, it has nothing to do with the show,” Pedowitz said during his executive session at the television critics association press tour. “The show, as far as we’re concerned, is that Salim, the other producers, the cast and the crew, they deserve to work.”
Warner Bros. Television launched an inquiry into Akil’s professional behavior last November, following a former girlfriend accused Akil of domestic violence in a lawsuit, saying she had engaged in a decade long sexual relationship with the filmmaker, during the time allegedly abused her on multiple occasions.
Akil’s former girlfriend, Amber Dixon Brenner, said that Akil stole the idea for OWN’s “Love Is” from an unproduced screenplay of hers. OWN has since canceled the series.
“When litigation came to us, Warner [Bros] did the appropriate thing and did an investigation on the set,” he continued. “There is no world where that is not a safe place, there were no wrongdoings found.”
When asked if the studio thinks Akil took the idea for the CW series from anyone, Pedowitz said, That’s for the courts to decide if that’s the case,” he said. “I think the studio believes he didn’t do that, so we’ll see what happens.”
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