Back in June it was announced that Netflix had pulled the plug on Lana and Lily Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski’s Sense8, although the streaming service did subsequently announce its return for a two-hour finale in 2018.
Well, it seems the sci-fi drama series has now been thrown a lifeline from a rather unexpected source: porn site xHamster, which has penned an open letter to the Wachowskis pitching a revival of the series.
“We’re not talking about a parody, or something less than, but an actual revival of the series,” writes xHamster vice president Alex Hawkins. “xHamster is currently one of the most trafficked websites on the internet. We get more visitors daily than The New York Times, ESPN or the Daily Mail. In short, we have the eyeballs, and the revenue. Unlike with Netflix, you wouldn’t be competing for part of our production budget – it would be yours.”
As for whether an xHamster-backed revival would need to ramp up the sex scenes, Hawkins told GQ that: “Sense8 is already a very sex-forward show, but I do think that it could be more explicit. But really, that’s up to the Wachowskis and the actors. We just want to be a platform for their vision. Some viewers may want to see more aggressive, extended versions of the sex scenes, while others may find them slow-moving. On a platform like ours, it’s really easy to give people options.”
While the prospect of a porn site moving into original, non-naughty content seems a tad ludicrous, Hawkins adds that: “Five years ago, people laughed at the idea of Netflix producing original series.”
Hmm… not quite the same, but we’ll see.
Originally published August 20, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
