Joss Whedon (The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) was poised to make his big return to television with The Nevers, a fantasy series he created for HBO that is set to premiere later this year. But Whedon walked away from the series in late 2020, and since the show must go on, HBO has hired his replacement.

British writer Philippa Goslett has been tapped to oversee the series, and you can learn more about both her and the show below.

Deadline brings word that Goslett has taken over showrunning duties for The Nevers, which has been described as “an epic science fiction drama about a gang of Victorian women who find themselves with unusual abilities, relentless enemies and a mission that might change the world.” Goslett’s previous credits include writing Mary Magdalene, the recent Rooney Mara/Joaquin Phoenix film; How to Talk to Girls at Parties, a romance about an alien who travels to London; and Little Ashes, a film about the lives of artist Salvador Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel, and writer Federico García Lorca in which Robert Pattinson played Dalí.

The Nevers was given a straight-to-series order way back in 2018, and was going to be the first time Whedon had been the showrunner of a television series in over a decade. But in November, Whedon walked away from the show, essentially saying that he didn’t think he was capable of producing such a huge show with the level of quality that it deserves. “I am genuinely exhausted, and am stepping back to martial my energy towards my own life, which is also at the brink of exciting change,” he said at the time. “I am deeply proud of the work we have done; I’m grateful to all my extraordinary cast and collaborators, and to HBO for the opportunity to shape yet another strange world. The Nevers is a true labor of love, but after two plus years of labor, love is about all I have to offer. It will never fade.”

For what it’s worth, actor Ray Fisher interpreted Whedon’s abrupt exit from this series as being a direct result of WarnerMedia’s internal investigation into Fisher’s claims that Whedon engaged in abusive behavior on the set of Justice League, which Whedon stepped in to finish in Zack Snyder’s absence. But that’s nothing more than a theory – and one that’s unlikely to ever be proven.

The Nevers was co-written by Whedon and his fellow Buffy writers Jane Espenson and Doug Petrie. It stars Laura Donnelly (Outlander, Olivia Williams (The Ghost Writer), James Norton (Happy Valley), Tom Riley (Da Vinci’s Demons), Ann Skelly (Vikings), Ben Chaplin (The Letter for the King), Pip Torrens (The Crown), Zackary Momoh (Harriet), Amy Manson (Once Upon a Time), Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead), Rochelle Neil (Death in Paradise), Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark), and Denis O’Hare (This is Us).

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