Big Little Lies Season 3 Lands Mr. And Mrs. Smith Writer Francesca Sloane For First Episode

Here at Empire HQ, we have our fair share of film and TV white whales we've never given up chasing. The MCU's Blade, a sequel to The Nice Guys, Peter Jackson's Tintin 2, Guillermo del Toro's At The Mountains Of Madness, and Denis Villeneuve's Rendezvous With Rama all keep us up at night, wondering what might've been and could yet be. But now, thanks to THR, we've actually got a real-life update on one such long-awaited project: Big Little Lies Season 3!

Per THR's reporting, Mr. And Mrs. Smith co-writer Francesca Sloane has come aboard to write the first episode of the next instalment in HBO's wildly popular adaptation/expansion of Liane Moriarty's eponymous mystery book. Finally in development after years of predominantly cast and creative led campaigning, the third season of showrunner David E. Kelley's many, many award-winning Big Little Lies is expected to see series regulars Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Zoë Kravitz, Laura Dern, and Shailene Woodley return as the five Californian women brought into each others' lives by the death of a serial abuser (Alexander Skarsgård).

Though the specifics of the plot for the next chapter in these women's lives remains firmly under wraps for now, today's news does bring with it additional reporting from Deadline that Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies sequel book — on whose completion the third season's go ahead has depended — is written and readying a 2026 release, with the series' timeline expected to jump forwards to a point where all of the key players are mothers of teenage children. All of this exciting BLL news does, it must be noted, come at the seeming cost of Season 2 of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, Donald Glover and Sloane's superbly subversive TV take on Doug Liman's 2005 spy spouses movie, which now finds itself indefinitely on hold — due as much to cast scheduling issues as Sloane's switch from Amazon MGM Studios to HBO, Deadline notes.

Still, with everyone involved in Big Little Lies keen to head back to the scene of the next crime, a top-notch writing hire in the shape of Francesca Sloane, and the messy-lives-of-the-rich-come-undone genre thriving as of late, it looks like this is one white whale we won't be having to chase much longer. Alexa, play 'Cold Little Heart' by Michael Kiwanuka...