Paul Giamatti

It’d take quite a flop for hotshot premium cable dramas not to earn a Season 2 pickup these days, and Showtime’s Billions isn’t exactly hurting for cash. Following a major debut for the network, the high-stakes financial drama has been confirmed for a second season to air in 2017.

The 2016 TV season has officially begun, and Showtime is already getting a jump on the other networks with Shameless and new financial drama Billions. The full premieres for both have been made available on multiple platforms, if you’re into that whole free premium TV thing.

The well seems to have run pretty dry for new TV in 2015, so Showtime will step in to give its 2016 lineup an early jump. Not only will Shameless fans be able to catch the Season 6 premiere as early as New Years Day, and without a Showtime subscription at that, but so too will the network release high-powered finance drama Billions ahead of schedule.

Just before Comic-Con 2015, Showtime’s Damian Lewis-Paul Giamatti financial drama Billions opened up the books for its first trailer, and with the network on the march at TCA, we know have a full premiere with a brand-new trailer. Billions will debut alongside Shameless Season 6 in 2016, but when?

Homeland fans haven’t exactly missed Nicholas Brody over the last few seasons, but Damian Lewis is back and smarmy as ever going up against Paul Giamatti in Showtime’s Billions. The high-stakes Wall Street drama has a first trailer, in which we learn the true purpose of “F— You Money.” Enjoy.

The classics of this genre featured danger and destruction on a scale a guy could wrap his head around; a hijacked airplane, a skyscraper on fire, a capsized ocean liner filling with water. But when you live by spectacle, you die by it too. And so the disasters got bigger and bigger, one movie trying to top the next, until it became an arms race of planetary devastation. One movie blows up the White House, the next one washes it away in a tidal wave. Where do you go from there? An exploding tidal wave? At this point, if your disaster movie isn’t eradicating a large portion of the globe, don’t even waste your time.

It’s not surprising that an animated movie based on Ratchet and Clank is happening – the popular video game franchise has spawned 14 official entries and spin-offs since 2002. It’s especially not surprising that that the film has cast the likes of Sylvester Stallone, John Goodman, Paul Giamatti, and Rosario Dawson – every animated movie is chock-full of big names these days. The real surprise to come out of this news is just how much the upcoming film crosses over with the video game talent.

I know San Andreas is a dark, serious disaster movie about a massive earthquake that decimates most of the West Coast, but c’mon; shouldn’t they have called it That Fault’s A’Rocking? It stars The Rock! It’s the San Andreas fault! It’s rocking! Because the earthquake and he’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnsyou know what nevermind, let’s just move on.

I know Brian Wilson, the genius behind the great pop group the Beach Boys, had a tough decade or two after the collapse of his band. But to transform from Paul Dano to John Cusack in the span of a couple years? Those are some seriously hard times...

We might not miss him on Homeland, but Damian Lewis is officially staying within the Showtime family. The Emmy-winner will officially join Paul Giamatti, Sons of Anarchy star Maggie Siff and more for Showtime’s new finance drama Billions, given an official series order for 2016.