Not a new record, since the very link you provide gives several examples of it happening before.
Link from article you linked: 7 awesome shows canceled before they premiered.
Unusual yes, but not unprecedented. Fox takes a lot of heat for prematurely cancelling good shows, so of course this sticks out. And part of the reason (I thought) given for cancelling existing shows like Almost Human was to devote time and resources to the new stuff. I just hope Gotham is interesting.
yeah - I hadn’t finished reading it when I posted - this was a full series order - not a pilot or test - thats why I thought it was more unusual.
Must not have been getting very good ratings…
Well they had only shot one episode, though they had scripts for several more. It seems reasonable to cut your losses under such circumstances, as appropriate.
I wonder whether that episode will go direct to video or perhaps be shoveled on to foreign markets. I suspect there is some distribution channel they could work with.
ETA: In the words of the show’s official description, the drama followed a “notorious thief who is plucked from prison to serve the Pharoah, forcing him to navigate palace intrigue, seductive concubines, criminal underbellies and divine sorcerers, as he races to stop the downfall of one of history’s greatest civilizations.” Seems like a workable premise.
For any great premise, there’s someone out there with just the right talents and vision to make it suck.
For example, I’ve always been impressed by how the Japanese are able to take movie premises about roaming samurai, warrior school girls, etc. and create films that are completely devoid of any fun or point of interest. You see a bunch of movies that are 90% people walking or staring at each other with no dialogue, and the one action scene in the whole thing is what was in the trailer. It’s worse than comedy movies where all the good jokes were in the trailer, since at least there’s still lesser jokes in the full-length version.
I agree, except my take is that hitting all the right notes is hard and since we’re discussing multi million dollar projects it’s sensible and unsurprising that creators angle off of what has worked in the past. With that in mind, a trifle that is cancelled at the last minute is probably cause for celebration.
Still, “Ruler sponsors thief to do undercover work”, has some potential. As for pacing, it improved immensely in the US during the 1980s for reasons that are unclear to me.
But nothing is worse than comedies that put all the punchlines in the trailer so you find yourself sitting through long setups for jokes you already see coming.
It’s a workable premise for cable. Maybe somebody at Fox noticed they’re a broadcast network.
How many people would have watched Rome or Spartacus or Game of Thrones if they didn’t have the nudity and violence?
Plenty, but not as many. They put that stuff in there because they know they can add the lowest common denominator, those who are only in it for the boobs, without losing the actual fans of the material. (well… Spartacus is more exploitative than the other two, not quite the same situation)
Most actual GoT and Rome fans are more annoyed/amused at the sexposition scenes, rather than thinking it adds to the entertainment value of the show.
I wonder how fanciful it would have been. How much is really known about day to day life in ancient Egypt?
They lost me as a viewer because of those things.
So premium channels have become synonymous with cable now? Because, otherwise, I can’t really see any difference between cable and broadcast now. Other than the occasional channel that will allow un-bleeped swearing at certain tims.
I enjoyed Starz’s Black Sails but spent a good amount of time wishing for less boobs, more boats. I guess boobs are cheaper to film though.
So Fox decides to do away with pilot season and order series straight to production. Then wait until one episode is made, look at it, and cancel it.
Sounds like pilot season while screwing with actor and crew availability even more.
There’s AMC’s TURN–supposedly “real history” about the Culper Spy Ring in the American Revolution. They turned the chronology inside-out & invented a love triangle, so we could see a weasel faced cabbage farmer torn between his sexy former GF & sexy blonde wife. These were real characters & the triangle didn’t happen. But quick sex scenes with bits of female flesh are cheaper to film than the actual very interesting history that happened–which might have involved casts of dozens. The CGI (mostly of ships) was laughably bad.
It got renewed & some will continue to watch for a few good performances. And to yell at the TV…
In fact, Fox is notorious for this - I wasn’t aware about “Us & Them”, but besides Manchester Prep, Fox announced, then pulled without airing:
Rewind
The Ortegas
Septuplets
Murder Police
Schimmel (with an asterisk - Robert Schimmel had to withdraw for cancer treatment)
Our Little Genius (another asterisk - two weeks before the premiere (and Fox even aired commercials for this one), the executive producer discovered that some associate producer(s) had told some of the contestants anything from a more specific category than was announced (similar to what happened on the original The $64,000 Question, when Gino Prato’s category was “Opera” but all of the questions were only about Italian operas) to specific questions and possibly even some answers, and the EP pulled the plug rather than risk Federal criminal charges for rigging a quiz show)
Here’s a Wikipedia list of “zero-hit wonders”, although I don’t know how many of them had actually been announced as being on any network’s schedule.
Seriously? You think they broadcast nudity on Fox and the other networks?
Yeah, FUCK that guy.