Artful Dodger second season to be shot in Sydney as Disney goes big on more Marvel and Star Wars

There’s a second season of Australian made global streaming hit The Artful Dodger coming, as Disney announces exciting new developments in the Star Wars and Marvel franchises.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Australia’s Maia Mitchell in The Artful Dodger.

Australian made global streaming hit The Artful Dodger is back to steal more hearts, with a second season just announced.

The Sydney-shot spin-off/sequel to Charles Dickens’ classic novel Oliver Twist earned strong reviews when it was released last December – it’s rated 92 per cent fresh on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes – and has been streaming giant Disney+’s most successful Australian original title.

The adventure-drama tells the story of former street thief Jack Dawkins – aka The Artful Dodger – and his villainous one-time boss and mentor Fagin after the events of the novel when both have relocated to convict-era Australia.

Former Game of Thrones and The Queens Gambit star Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Harry Potter veteran David Thewlis are both back for the second eight-episode season, as is Australian actor Maia Mitchell as the governor’s daughter, aspiring surgeon and love interest, Lady Belle Fox.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster and David Thewlis are back for a second season of The Artful Dodger.

Sydney’s historic Callan Park – a heritage-listed former hospital for the insane – will again stand in for the fictional penal colony of Port Victory, where Dawkins is trying to leave behind his shady past and reinvent himself as a forward thinking surgeon, albeit one with a gambling problem that’s constantly threatening to bring him undone.

For the first season, both Brodie-Sangster and Mitchell read through real-life case files of an era when surgery was gory, low-tech, and often as dangerous as the affliction. They were also put through their practical paces by a medical expert.

“For me, it was (looking at) different women who were in medicine at the time who were breaking the glass ceiling and trying to draw from that, and also all the procedures that we had to do practically,” said Mitchell. “We had a medical adviser, a doctor, who would walk us through and we had to practise. We would be sitting in the makeup room practising our suturing on like a piece of (prosthetic) skin. It was a bit gory.”

Maia Mitchell had to learn about medical procedures from the period. “It was a bit gory.”

While The Artful Dodger takes its inspiration from beloved Dickens characters, the series was created and written by James McNamara (The Outrageous True Story of Milky Moore), and for the second season he’s joined in the writer’s room by Kate Mulvany (Summer Love, Upright), Dan Knight (The Artful Dodger, Irreverent), and Miranda Tapsell (Top End Bub, Top End Wedding).

The Walt Disney Company Australia and New Zealand senior vice president and managing director, Kylie Watson-Wheeler, said that global demand had prompted the decision to renew the series, which will start shooting next year.

“The return of our Australian-born Disney+ Original scripted drama, complete with all-star cast and a brilliant crew, is a testament to the series’ high calibre of production and its local and international audience success,” Watson-Wheeler said. “We’re delighted this high-stakes romantic drama of heists, comedy, and beautifully complicated life and love, will thrill and entertain again.”

Disney also previewed some of its hottest content for the coming months at its Asia Pacific Content Showcase in Singapore, including updates for its hugely successful Marvel and Star Wars franchises.

Banishing any thoughts of superhero fatigue after the record box office haul of this year’s Deadpool and Wolverine, it’s all go for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Beginning next month, there will be a third season of the animated crossover series What If … followed by an animated Spider-Man series in January, Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man.

New Captain America Anthony Mackie at the Disney APAC Showcase.

And on the small screen, the former Netflix property Daredevil will finally make its appearance in the MCU with the dark, gritty and violent looking Daredevil Born Again arriving in March. In June of next year, Riri Williams, a character first introduced in Wakanda Forever, will get her own show Ironheart, produced by Ryan Coogler.

Anthony Mackie, who has taken over from Chris Evans as the new Captain America, turned up in the flesh with some footage from the eagerly anticipated Captain America: Brave New World, which will be released in February and also stars Star Wars and Indiana Jones legend Harrison Ford as the President of the US, who turns into the Red Hulk.

“It’s exciting,” said Mackie. “There’s nothing like it. I have been in the universe for over 10 years now and been in over 10 of these movies, so to have Sam Wilson start off the way he did and then grow into Captain America is unique. No other character in any other cinematic universe has had that experience. He has the ability not only honour his country but also honour his friend Steve Rogers.”

But the biggest cheer went up for the retro-looking Fantastic Four: First Steps. Press from the region saw first-look footage of Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Johnny Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch and Ebon Moss Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing.

The Mandalorian and Grogu are bound for the big screen.

And in the Star Wars universe, it was announced that Sigourney Weaver had joined the cast of the eagerly anticipated movie The Mandalorian and Grogu, due for release in 2026. Before then though, fans of that galaxy far, far away will be treated to the kid-focused Skeleton Crew, which releases next month, and a second season of the rave-reviewed Andor in April, footage of which teased the return of Aussie Ben Mendelsohn as the white-caped villain Orson Krennic.

The animating geniuses at Pixar have also been busy, with the big-screen alien adventure Elio to be released in June and Hoppers, about a boy whose brain is projected into a robot beaver so he can go undercover in the animal world, will be released in 2026. And in addition to work continuing on Toy Story 5, it was also announced that a third Incredibles movie is officially in production.

Rami Malek as Heller in The Amateur.

Other highlights on the Disney slate for coming months include the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, with Timothee Chalamet as the music great; a hi-tech third Tron movie starring Oscar-winners Jared Leto and a returning Jeff Bridges; and the intense looking thriller The Amateur, with Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek as a vengeance fuelled rogue agent.

Avatar: Fire and Ash will take audiences to new parts of Pandora.

And at the end of the year, the next chapter in James Cameron’s box office phenomenon franchise Avatar: Fire and Ash will be released and promises to introduce new parts and peoples of Pandora, including the Windtraders and the hostile Ash People.

Originally published as Artful Dodger second season to be shot in Sydney as Disney goes big on more Marvel and Star Wars