“Ray Donovan” will return to give fans a proper ending after being unceremoniously axed by Showtime, sources have exclusively confirmed.
The Liev Schreiber drama will either come back for a few final episodes or a movie to lay the characters to rest, Page Six can reveal.
Fans were left fuming after Showtime canceled the show a week ago — denying them a proper ending after the Season 7 finale finished with a cliffhanger. Series showrunner David Hollander admitted that he and the show’s creative team had been blindsided.
Schreiber hinted at possible news on Instagram, saying: “It seems like your voices have been heard,” he told fans in message Wednesday evening. “Too soon to say how or when, but with a little luck and your ongoing support, there will be more ‘Ray Donovan.’”
And a source confirmed to Page Six: “There was an outpouring of support from fans and they pummeled Showtime, who it would seem did not recognize the power of the fan base and social media.”
Showtime chiefs broke the news despite the fact that producers had already rented the set stages and the cast and crew were expecting to return in the fall for an eighth and final season.
The source said: “We’re thrilled. Liev took the news very hard, he is a serious actor and takes this role seriously, not to be able to finish this character was hurting him, it was torturing him.
“He had committed his life to the show for the past seven years.”
The cast and crew will likely return to set in fall, we’re told.
Sources say the decision to ax the show was made for political reasons amid the recent merger between CBS, which owns Showtime, and Viacom.
As Hollander told Vulture: “We were behaving creatively as though we were in mid-sentence. And so, there was no sense that this was going to be a completion. This was in no way a series finale.”
“Whatever new environment grew from the merger clearly had some impact on their choice,” Hollander said, before noting that many of the executives who championed “Ray Donovan” at the start were there for its funeral as well.
“The people who made this decision are the same people who brought this to the air. They were unbelievably supportive creatively. They were always deeply in the artist’s corner, and deeply committed to our success,” he said. “There was never a moment where I saw any of them negatively charged toward our show. They were always proud of it. They always accepted our indulgences. They put up with the fact that I was demanding a visual template as strong as anything out there. And that’s time and money. They were cool with that — until they weren’t.”