The crime drama, starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, will not be back for a third season, TVLine has learned. The news came out during a panel at Saturday’s produced by conference in Los Angeles.
‘Tokyo Vice’ S2 finale, which dropped on April 4, now serves as its series finale. A Max rep, however, tells TVLine that the series was always conceived as a two-season show, and star Elgort had only signed on for the two seasons that streamed, PTI reported.
“Over the last five years Max has made sure we got to tell our story,” executive producers J.T. Rogers and Alan Poul said in a joint statement. “They have supported us through thick and thin. Not only did they give us these two seasons, they said yes when we asked to end Season 1 with a series of cliffhangers, and they said yes when we asked for two extra episodes so we could land the plane in the way J.T. had always envisioned.
“We’re grateful not only to Max, but to our partners Fifth Season, who sold the show around the world, and made it a global success story. They were in the trenches with us always, guaranteeing that we could make the show we wanted to make. The response from both the press and from fans, in particular to Season 2, has been overwhelming. It’s been thrilling to find out how deeply viewers have engaged with our characters, and to hear how they are clamoring for more. We know there is more story to tell. Of course we’ll see what the future holds, but we are indeed grateful to have been able to share this story on Max until now.”
Added a spokesperson for Max, “From Tokyo Vice’s richly written material to the gorgeously composed shots to the lived-in performances, the care and creativity of this enormously talented cast and crew shines in every frame of the show. We thank J.T., Alan, Ansel, Ken, Fifth Season, and Wowow for their partnership on this wholly unique modern noir thriller.”
Loosely inspired by American journalist Jake Adelstein’s non-fiction, firsthand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat, Tokyo Vice — which was filmed on location — captured Adelstein’s (Elgort) daily descent into the neon-soaked underbelly of the city in the late ’90s, where nothing and no one is truly what or who they seem.