Photo : Anne Marie Fox ( HBO )

It’s become an increasingly pressing question in this world of mini series that end up being less mini than initially advertised, and limited series that constantly strain against their limits: Can any TV project truly be declared “ended” at this point, especially if it was a ratings success? Take HBO’s Sharp Objects, a gripping, psychologically harrowing, and seemingly complete adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name, a project so apparently distressing to bring to the screen that star Amy Adams reportedly told HBO that she never wants to revisit the scarred skin of haunted journalist Camille Preaker ever again.


But don’t tell that to showrunner Marti Noxon, who told THR this week that she and Flynn are still trying to work out where a second season of the celebrated cable series might go. “Maybe there will be a sequel and we’ll get to find out,” Noxon said at SXSW this weekend, referring to whatever skeletons (or teeth) might still be lurking in Camille’s closets. “Gillian and I have some thoughts on it.”

Not that anything’s set in stone, but Noxon—whose other credits include serialized success stories like Unreal, Buffy, and Angel—is clearly entertaining the idea that Sharp Objects’ story has yet to run its course. Which is maybe a tad rich, given that, in that same interview, she held up Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale as a project that shouldn’t have tried moving past its source material, but hey, Sharp Objects was great, so who knows what they might be able to pull off.