'Big Love' To End Its Run After Season 5

[Brian Damage]

It is the end of the road for HBO's polygamy drama Big Love. The series' upcoming fifth season will be its last, with the Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer writing the closer as the series' finale. Despite gripes about the most recent fourth season, the series, from Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman's Playtone Prods., has remained for the most past creatively solid. It earned a best drama Emmy nomination last year and boasts a solid ensemble cast of established pros Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Chloe Sevigny as well as ingenues Amanda Seyfried and Ginnifer Goodwin both of whom went on to star in movies. “It has been an honor and pleasure to work with series creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer on this unique and provocative series, and I’m happy that they will be able to bring the story to its close the way they always envisioned,” HBO's president of programming Michael Lombardo said. “We look forward with great anticipation to collaborating with Mark and Will on their next venture.” Olsen and Scheffer are working on a new project for the pay cable network, which will be announced shortly. “When we created Big Love in 2002, we had a strong conception of the journey the Henrickson family would make over the course of the series, of the story we had to tell,” Olsen and Scheffer said.

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