Shadow And Bone, Glamorous and Agent Elvis are among the five shows Netflix is cancelling, it’s been announced.
Netflix has announced that it’s cancelling a handful of its original TV shows in the wake of the recent Hollywood strikes. The shows affected are, in no particular order, Glamorous, Agent Elvis, Farzar, Captain Fall and Shadow And Bone.
Of these, Shadow And Bone is perhaps the most high-profile; a fantasy series based on the books by Leigh Bardugo, it was headed up by Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Heisserer (he wrote the script for Arrival). Featuring a sprawling ensemble cast which included Jessie Mei, Kit Young and Zoe Wanamaker, Shadow And Bone ran for two seasons and was generally well received, with Netflix – which is usually secretive about viewing figures – saying that the first season had been watched by 55m households worldwide.
All those households evidently weren’t enough to save Shadow And Bone, though – or Glamorous, the Miss Benny and Kim Cattrall-led drama series which only made its debut in June.
According to Deadline, which broke the news, the aforementioned WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have sent scheduling plans into disarray, meaning some shows are having to be cut in order to prevent a glut of competing productions in 2024 and 2025. The general belt-tightening we’ve seen from streaming companies and the tech sector at large has also led Netflix to look again at its raft of more expensive projects.
We saw evidence of this on the 13th November, when Netflix’s head of film production, Scott Stuber, announced his plans for a ‘less is more’ approach to the company’s film slate.
It’s not all bad news, though. Live-action anime adaptation One Piece – a surprise success for Netflix – has been renewed for a second season, and there’s also lots more episodes of The Lincoln Lawyer, Heartstopper, The Night Agent, The Diplmat, Sweet Magnolias, and Castlevania: Nocturne on the way.
