Aaron Sorkin’s ‘Newsroom’ Renewed for Third and Final Season

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The ACN News Night team is coming back for a third and final season.

HBO has officially renewed the Jeff Daniels drama for a final installment, which is expected to air this fall. The news comes nearly six months after HBO programming president Michael Lombardo noted publicly that he’d be “shocked” if the series didn’t return. The holdup has been creator Aaron Sorkin, who needed to pen the Steve Jobs film script before turning his attention back to Newsroom.

Joining Sorkin and executive producers Alan Poul and Scott Rudin for Newsroom‘s third season is Paul Lieberstein. The former showrunner of (and actor on) The Office, a Sorkin favorite, will come aboard as an executive producer on the HBO series. The trio has been meeting in recent weeks to map out what’s next for the show, with production set to commence this spring. The cast was locked into new deals in September, which explains Emmy-winning star Jeff Daniels‘ much-covered tweet about a third season.

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The Sorkin creation, set behind the scenes at a cable news show, will have no shortage of potential news events to incorporate into the third season, including the Newtown School shooting (December 2012) and the Boston Marathon massacre (April 2013). The series’ second season, which rolled out July 14, ended with a two-parter taking place on election night 2012.

Though the series, starring Daniels, Emily Mortimer and Sam Waterston, has found itself on the receiving end of media criticism since its summer 2012 debut, it has performed for HBO. In addition to an Emmy win for Daniels and decent ratings — the season-two premiere lured 2.2 million, up 4 percent from season one — Newsroom has delivered a passionate, elite viewership that includes such bold-face names as Dan Rather and Brian Williams, and the kind of high-brow conversation that comes with it.

Lombardo was more specific about that Newsroom allure during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter this past spring: “It felt like the show was hitting a smart, adult audience that many of our dramas weren’t,” he noted at that time, adding: “For a thinking audience, it’s appointment viewing.”

Newsroom joins two other HBO dramas, True Blood and Boardwalk Empire, set to end their runs later this year. In preparation, HBO is readying a collection of new series, including Damon Lindelof drama The Leftovers, Mike Judge comedy Silicon Valley and anthology series True Detective.

Email: Lacey.Rose@THR.com

Twitter: @LaceyVRose