"SPINNERS has already proven that African stories can compete on the world stage, and this rollout is us backing that conviction at scale," said Nomsa Philiso, Executive Vice President, Content, CANAL+ Africa. Audiences from Lagos to Paris, she said, will experience South African storytelling at its best. The release also reflects STUDIOCANAL's ambition to support large-scale productions in South Africa and showcase its technical expertise.

Season 2 raises the stakes for Ethan (Cantona James) and his crew, who have traded the Cape Flats for Johannesburg. Now rising stars of the city's spinning scene, Ethan, Trevor (Braeden Buys), Shane (Dillon Windvogel), Angelo (Nahum Hughes) and Amber (Chelsea Thomas) have fame, love and stability within reach, until a brutal ambush orchestrated by Ethan's former gang threatens to unravel everything. Beyond the adrenaline, the season explores the price of power, the cycle of violence and the weight of grief.

New to the cast is the Maseko family: matriarch Ma Sithole (Clementine Mosimane), her bodyguard (Mondli Makhoba), grandson and Ethan's new rival Sayi (Aphiwe Mkefe) and granddaughter Amahle (Luyanda Zwane).

• Across Africa, from 25 October: the original version airs on channels including Mzansi Magic (South Africa), Africa Magic Showcase (Nigeria), Akwaaba Magic (Ghana), Pearl Magic Prime (Uganda) and Zambezi Magic (Zambia). Swahili dubs serve Kenya and Tanzania, Amharic dubs Ethiopia, and Portuguese-subtitled versions reach Mozambique and Angola.

• French-speaking Africa: the series airs in French on CANAL+MAGIC.

• From 26 October: CANAL+ and its app carry the show in France and its overseas territories (Réunion Island, Mauritius, the Caribbean, New Caledonia and Polynesia), and in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium.

  

That makes it one of the broadest rollouts of any CANAL+ African original to date.

Cantona James, who returns as Ethan, said his character's move from Cape Town to Johannesburg mirrors his own journey as a "Jozi boy". "We live in a rainbow nation, but we rarely see that represented authentically on our screens," he said. Luyanda Zwane called the season "an exciting moment" for African storytelling, and Aphiwe Mkefe spoke of the importance of telling authentic South African stories on a global scale. Director Jaco Bouwer summed up the theme: the scars we carry, "the ones that don't show up in rear-view mirrors".

The eight-part series is co-created by Joachim Landau and showrunner Benjamin Hoffman, with Bouwer directing and Matthew Jankes and Sean Steinberg as head writers. Landau produces for Federation Middle East, Africa and Caribbean, with Ramadan Suleman co-producing for Natives at Large. It is a MultiChoice and CANAL+ co-production, with STUDIOCANAL handling international distribution, and is sponsored by Telkom in South Africa.