A lot of movies and TV shows get canceled for a very simple and boring reason: Not enough people were interested. But sometimes, things are much, much weirder.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00A lot of movies and TV shows get canceled for a very simple and boring reason — not
00:05enough people were interested.
00:06But sometimes things are much, much weirder.
00:10After the original Superman franchise perished in a ball of nuclear fire, executives were
00:15in a quandary as to how best to rekindle the Man of Steel's cinematic mojo.
00:19Apparently, in the 90s, infamous producer John Peters had commissioned a couple of different
00:23drafts of a script entitled Superman Reborn.
00:27The second draft was actually welcomed by Warner execs — until it fell into the hands
00:31of Kevin Smith, then just a comic fan with only three features to his name.
00:36Smith apparently rewrote the script completely, turning in a draft called Superman Lives.
00:41Supposedly, it reads a whole lot like today's Marvel blockbusters, while adhering to Peters'
00:46mandate that there be no stupid suit and no flying.
00:49Oh, and Superman had to fight a giant spider in the end.
00:53After a second draft, none other than Tim Burton came on board to direct, with Nicolas
00:57Cage set to star — at which point Peters promptly trashed Smith's script.
01:02After several more rewrites, Burton got bored, Peters got his giant spider plugged into the
01:07end of Wild Wild West, and Superman Lives died.
01:10However, we did get one beautifully strange picture of Nicolas Cage as Superman from the
01:15canceled project.
01:17Still, it's not exactly snakeskin.
01:20"...my snakeskin jacket!
01:22Thanks, baby!
01:23Did I ever tell you that this here jacket represents some of my individuality and my
01:27belief in personal freedom?"
01:29Ten Things I Hate About You helped to bolster the movie star credentials of Heath Ledger
01:33and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and earned its place in the hearts of viewers with its wry humor
01:37and ultra-90s soundtrack.
01:40In 2012, at pretty much precisely the moment the film's target audience started to become
01:44capable of nostalgia, a belated sequel called Ten Things I Hate About Life went into production
01:50and then suddenly vanished.
01:52After several weeks of filming in late 2012, production halted for reasons that are completely
01:57unclear and just never started again.
02:00A lawsuit filed by the film's production company accused star Evan Rachel Wood of changing
02:04her mind about finishing the film during the break in production, while Wood insisted that
02:09the producers had run out of money and needed a scapegoat.
02:13Much like the film's production, the litigation seems to have simply petered out, and Ten
02:17Things fans were left in the lurch with nothing but a trailer.
02:20After shelling out $1 million for the script in 2005 and attaching Peter Jackson as producer
02:25and the then-unknown Neil Blomkamp as director, Microsoft mounted the most ill-advised pitch
02:31for a Halo movie that they possibly could have.
02:33They delivered copies of the script to unimpressed studio execs via hired actors in Master Chief
02:39costumes.
02:40Oh, and Microsoft's terms included full creative control and as big a budget as they wanted.
02:46Interested parties had 24 hours to decide.
02:49"...that is, unless of course you pay me, $100 billion dollars."
02:57Nearly every studio passed immediately, with Fox and Universal agreeing to partner up.
03:02But more problems ensued.
03:04Microsoft's continuing inability to speak Hollywoodese frustrated executives, and studio
03:08head Tom Rothman hated Blomkamp.
03:11After several months and millions of dollars in pre-production, Universal demanded that
03:15the producers make budget cuts.
03:17The producers said no, and Halo bit the dust.
03:20According to one involved party,
03:22"...Microsoft's unwillingness to reduce their deal killed it.
03:25It got too top-heavy.
03:27The movie could have been Avatar."
03:29Perhaps no author has proved more unadaptable than H.P.
03:33Lovecraft, the writer who gave the world most of the Cthulhu mythos.
03:36But if anybody was qualified to bring one of the pioneering author's most seminal works
03:40to the screen, it would be director Guillermo del Toro.
03:44Despite the challenging nature of the material, del Toro was ready to let cinematic deity
03:48James Cameron produce and Tom Cruise star in order to get a proper adaptation of the
03:52famous story on film.
03:54Unfortunately, the project fell apart over one point of contention, the rating.
03:59While they didn't blink at the proposed $150 million budget, Universal simply couldn't
04:03abide an R rating for the movie.
04:06As del Toro told Collider,
04:08"...we thought we had a very good, safe package.
04:10The R was what made it.
04:12If Mountains had been PG-13, or I had said PG-13, I'm too much of a Boy Scout.
04:17I should have lied, but I didn't."
04:19Before Samuel L. Jackson gave the world the version of Nick Fury that we all know today,
04:24George Clooney was in talks to star in a Nick Fury movie.
04:27Now, today it's really hard to imagine anyone but Jackson as Nick Fury, but Clooney did
04:32sort of fit with the older, white version of Nick Fury from the comics.
04:36However, according to Business Insider, at some point Clooney picked up an issue from
04:40the 2001 comic series written by Garth Ennis and was forever put off the idea of playing
04:45Nick Fury.
04:46That was enough to derail everyone's movie aspirations, Clooney thought the gratuitously
04:50violent comics might translate into a gratuitously violent film, and he evidently didn't think
04:55that was a smart career move.
04:57However, we so far haven't seen Samuel L. Jackson do anything close to the grotesque
05:01violence of the 2001 comic series, so Clooney's decision might have been a little hasty.
05:06Although in Clooney's defense, we suppose anyone would be a little gun-shy when his
05:11career took a hit after appearing in Batman & Robin.
05:14After all, you know what they say about Hollywood…
05:16It's a cold town.
05:19It's hard to imagine, but there was a time when the great Steven Spielberg didn't know
05:23much about making movies.
05:25Way, way back in 1967, toward the start of Spielberg's career, he worked on a short film
05:30named Slipstream, which Empire called,
05:33"...a tale about adrenaline-junkie bicycle racers designed as an exercise in directorial
05:38showmanship."
05:39Spielberg worked on the film over the course of a few weekends, but then ran out of money.
05:44That's because he figured on being able to make the film for around $5,000, which frankly
05:48sounds insane, even in 1967 dollars.
05:51Granted, Slipstream was supposed to be a short film, but in the mid-1960s, the average feature-length
05:57movie was 127 minutes long and cost around $1.5 million.
06:02$5,000 for a short film seems a little optimistic, especially considering that in those days
06:07the average movie cost about $12,000 per minute of film.
06:11That's not to say nothing good came of the experience.
06:14Without Slipstream, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Empire of the Sun, and The Color Purple might
06:18have never been made.
06:20While searching for a cameraman for Slipstream, Spielberg was introduced to cinematographer
06:25Alan Daviau, who worked on all three of those future projects.
06:29If you are one of the many 80s kids who has fond memories of watching E.T. on the big
06:34screen, you've probably wondered at some point why they never made a sequel.
06:37Surely, that heartwarming tale of a boy's friendship with a friendly alien would have
06:41inspired at least a follow-up movie or two.
06:44As it turns out, there actually was a sequel to E.T. in the works, and thank all the lords
06:48of Hollywood and everything that is good in the universe that it was never actually made.
06:53If it was, it would have shattered the innocence of every one of those 80s kids.
06:57Know what we're talking about?
06:58Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
07:02The E.T. sequel was called Nocturnal Fears, and the plot was so ridiculous that one wonders
07:07whether Steven Spielberg was temporarily replaced by an actual alien when he was planning this
07:11freak show of a movie.
07:13According to SyFy, the story included such suspenseful plot points as children being
07:18tortured and interrogated, and cattle being mutilated, because what's more creative than
07:23an alien movie in which humans are probed and cattle are mutilated?
07:26Thankfully, at some point, Spielberg came to his senses and canceled the project.
07:31You'll be shocked to hear that some movies don't get made because Hollywood egos get
07:35in the way.
07:36It's true!
07:37And it's not always the actors who suffer from massive egos.
07:41Directors do, too, and sometimes the people who are providing the money decide to back
07:44way up when confronted with these creative egomaniacs.
07:49According to Empire, that's exactly what happened with Paul Verhoeven's Crusade, an epic story
07:53of violence, racism, and anti-Semitism, which some people described as part Spartacus, part
07:59Conan.
08:00Crusade was going to star Arnold Schwarzenegger, everyone's favorite governor and manly man,
08:05and it was far enough along that the sets had already been built in Spain and the actors
08:09had already signed.
08:10Then, in the final studio meeting, someone had the audacity to ask Verhoeven if he could
08:15guarantee that the film's expenditures wouldn't exceed $100 million, and he proceeded to lose
08:21his mind.
08:22Schwarzenegger told Empire that Verhoeven flew into a rant about how guarantees don't
08:26happen, which included some nonsensical stuff about getting hit by a truck and not believing
08:31in God.
08:32Schwarzenegger said he kept kicking the director under his chair to get him to shut up, but
08:35according to him, he just wouldn't, and that was it.
08:38That was the end of that movie.
08:40Maybe Arnold should have been a little less subtle.
08:43Before Star Wars, there was Star Trek.
08:50But while the latter might have come first, it's Star Wars that has dominated popular
08:54culture since its debut.
08:56The ironic thing?
08:57The original Star Trek motion picture actually got canceled because of Star Wars.
09:02Yes, it's crazy, but true.
09:04According to Den of Geek, the original Star Trek movie had an insane series of possible
09:08plots bandied about on the way to the big screen.
09:11These included everything from a machine hurtling through space pretending to be God to a race
09:15of vengeful snake people to a black hole and some Mayans.
09:19The writers finally settled on a story called Planet of the Titans, which would have had
09:23the Greek Titans living on the edge of a black hole.
09:27But even after they settled on a story, the movie was plagued by casting difficulties,
09:31of disagreements, and finally, a lack of vision about what fans might want.
09:36The film was originally set to film in 1976, but all these issues pushed it back to 1977,
09:42which is when Star Wars was set to hit theaters.
09:46And ultimately, all the pre-release buzz about Star Wars sealed the deal on the bizarre Star
09:50Trek movie.
09:51Some reportedly thought that Star Wars would flop, while others felt that either way, the
09:55market for science fiction wasn't big enough to support both franchises.
09:59Paramount chairman Barry Diller supposedly even said,
10:01"...there's no future in science fiction."
10:04Nice call, Nostradamus.
10:06Before the iconic 1988 movie The Naked Gun, there was its somewhat less iconic but still
10:11brilliant television ancestor, Police Squad.
10:14Like Naked Gun and its two follow-up films, the show was a parody of 1960s police dramas
10:19starring the late Leslie Nielsen as the hilariously dead pan detective Frank Drebin.
10:23The humor was fast-paced and often visual, which is a pretty great formula for an audience
10:28sitting in a darkened movie theater watching a big screen.
10:31It didn't seem to work so well for the more distractible television audiences of the early
10:3580s, however.
10:36"...there'd been a recent wave of murders at the city zoo.
10:39I was bringing in a suspect when I got a call from headquarters about the kidnapping of
10:43Terry Burton."
10:44When asked about the reason behind the decision to cancel Police Squad, network executive
10:48Tony Tomopoulos famously said the show was canceled because, quote, "...the viewer had
10:53to watch it in order to appreciate it."
10:55A TV show you had to watch?
10:57Weird, right?
10:58What he meant, of course, was that the jokes moved so quickly that a casual viewer might
11:02miss something if they were having conversations, eating dinner, or doing anything else other
11:07than paying attention to the rapid-fire gags.
11:10That didn't stop critics from relentlessly dunking on his reasoning, though.
11:14TV Guide even went so far as to call his statements, quote, "...the most stupid reason a network
11:18ever gave for ending a series."
11:20Considering some other reasons you're about to hear, that's saying something.
11:24Before Star Wars claimed the title of the greatest merchandising vehicle of all time,
11:28there was Batman, the unconventionally popular television series starring Adam West as the
11:33campy Caped Crusader and Burt Ward as the Boy Wonder.
11:36The 1966 series appealed to a huge audience.
11:40Kids loved the colorful super-heroics of the dynamic duo, and adults caught on to the show's
11:44self-aware deadpan comedy.
11:46It was so popular that it had two episodes airing each week, with a cliffhanger leading
11:51from Wednesday night to the same bad time on Thursday, and racked up massive ratings
11:55and a list of Hollywood stars that wanted the dishonor of playing a special guest villain
11:59on a genuine pop culture phenomenon.
12:02Batman and Robin spent three years fighting crime on television and even starred in a
12:05feature-length theatrical film.
12:07But they couldn't save themselves from the most diabolical death trap of all, the network.
12:12ABC decided to kill the show halfway through its third season, citing high production costs
12:17and falling ratings.
12:19Sounds normal enough, right?
12:20The story doesn't end there, though.
12:23In a twist right out of Batman's death-defying playbook, NBC was willing to pick the show
12:27up for a fourth season.
12:29Unfortunately, nobody told the guys with the bulldozers to wait a few weeks before destroying
12:33the elaborate and expensive sets.
12:36NBC balked at the idea of spending thousands of dollars on rebuilding the Batcave for a
12:40show with slipping ratings, and pow, that was the end of the dynamic duo.
12:45If only they'd asked millionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne if he could spare a few bucks for
12:49the fight against crime, we might have gotten a fourth season.
12:52Fans of Joss Whedon's space-western series Firefly are still mourning the early demise
12:56of their favorite show in 2002, and some are even still holding out for some kind of reprieve
13:01or revival nearly two decades later.
13:03"...may have been the losing side.
13:06Still not convinced it was the wrong one."
13:08That might seem more than a little obsessive, but it's also understandable given the circumstances.
13:13The demise of Firefly was a combination of different unfortunate factors, but from a
13:18it almost looked as if network executives were maniacally conspiring to ensure its failure.
13:23They marketed it as a wacky genre comedy, which it definitely was not.
13:27They put it in a Friday night time slot that was infamous for a lack of viewers, and they
13:31inexplicably chose to air the episodes out of order, with the pilots, where all the major
13:36characters in their world were introduced, appearing last.
13:40While the show's small core group of fans stuck with the show through every considerable
13:43step, the rest of Firefly's viewers were baffled by the inconsistencies and disappointed
13:48that the wacky comedy they tuned in to see was actually a western reimagined as a sci-fi
13:53drama that dealt with some pretty dark themes.
13:56Sure, it had lots of jokes, but the stories about desperate criminals and space cannibals
14:00were definitely much darker than the viewers had been led to believe.
14:04The poor ratings were enough to convince Fox the show was a failure, and it declined to
14:08resurrect Firefly even after desperate fans organized a postcard-writing campaign to plead
14:12for a stay of execution.
14:14Eventually, however, the completed first and only season of the show expanded its audience
14:19on DVD and streaming, and Whedon got the chance to tell more of the story in the 2005 feature
14:23film Serenity, which was largely possible because of all that fan enthusiasm.
14:28Millennials buy smartphones, baby boomers buy transistor radios, and no one sells transistor
14:34radios anymore.
14:35Or, at least, that was the logic behind the cancellation of Harry's Law, a smart crime
14:39drama starring Kathy Bates as a former patent lawyer turned criminal defense attorney.
14:44According to the L.A. Times, Harry's Law was NBC's second-most-watched drama of the 2011-2012
14:50television season, ranking just behind Smash and just above Law & Order SVU.
14:55How could 8.8 million viewers be wrong?
14:58Because there were 8.8 million older viewers.
15:01Yes, that's right.
15:02Harry's Law ended because advertisers didn't think they could sell enough stuff to Grandma.
15:06Next thing I know, I'm broke.
15:09And starving.
15:10I had no money.
15:11Not even for food.
15:13Despite winning an Emmy, the show didn't perform well with viewers aged 18 to 49, a lucrative
15:18demographic for advertisers, which left NBC network executives with a lot of difficulty
15:23in selling the show's advertising time.
15:25You'd think they could just shore things up with commercials for medical alert systems,
15:29Werther's Originals, and those jitterbug phones with the giant buttons, and at least get a
15:33little cash out of those 8.8 million.
15:35But no.
15:36It's for the best, though.
15:37Those companies tend to pay for airtime with crisp $5 bills folded up into birthday cards.
15:42Given his track record in children's television, you'd think any network targeting kids would
15:47let Paul Dini do pretty much whatever he wanted.
15:49After all, he'd worked on kid-friendly hits like Tiny Toon Adventures before becoming
15:53one of the showrunners behind Batman the Animated Series, where he co-created Harley Quinn and
15:58gave Warner Bros. one of its most popular and profitable new characters in decades.
16:02Unfortunately, Cartoon Network didn't want to take the chance, canceling his popular
16:06series Tower Prep after only 13 episodes.
16:09The reason?
16:10In a 2013 interview, Dini accused Cartoon Network of ending the live-action teen drama
16:15because it had too many girls, both on screen and, probably as a result, in the audience.
16:21Don't misunderstand.
16:22It's not that the network wanted Dini to leave out female characters altogether.
16:25It just wanted him to make sure that female characters were, as he put it, quote,
16:29one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, and not as interesting as the boys.
16:34So when Dini ignored this helpful advice and kept on writing some compelling backstories
16:38for his female characters, the show got the axe, frustrating fans even further by ending
16:42on a cliffhanger.
16:44So why, exactly, did Cartoon Network want to exclude half of Tower Prep's potential
16:48audience?
16:49Allegedly, they didn't think girls would buy enough merchandise to make it worth having
16:52prominent female characters who apparently need to be justified in order to exist.
16:57Because if there's one thing we know about teenage girls, it's that they never spend
17:00enough money to make someone ridiculously wealthy on genre stories that include women,
17:04right?
17:05Are there by any chance any vampires in this book?
17:08Dark, brooding vampires?
17:10Who know they shouldn't fall in love with a mortal female, but do anyways?"
17:15Tower Prep wasn't the only victim of Cartoon Network's terrible decision-making.
17:20Just look at Adventure Time, one of Cartoon Network's most unexpected hits.
17:23It was the weirdly compelling story about a boy, a dog, and a bunch of people made out
17:28of candy, or magic fire, or lemons, or cinnamon buns, or space lumps.
17:33Either way, they had, well, adventures, and a fantastic world of magic and mystery that
17:37was bright and fun and relentlessly charming, right up until it turned serious and hit its
17:42viewers right in the emotions.
17:43This means someday, you'll die.
17:47You know that, right?
17:50I guess that'll be my last adventure.
17:53As a result, the show didn't just appeal to the kids it was originally aimed at, it also
17:57got the attention of a huge audience of adult viewers.
17:59Great, right?
18:00Well, no.
18:02It turns out that kinda presented a problem for Cartoon Network.
18:05They couldn't move it into their grown-ups-only Adult Swim time slot for fear of losing their
18:09huge kid audience, but they couldn't monetize all of those adult viewers if they left it
18:13in the earlier time slot.
18:15To be fair, Adventure Time ran for a full ten seasons and is unquestionably one of the
18:19most iconic cartoons of a generation.
18:22But in the end, it was canceled because it was just too popular with the wrong audience.
18:27You know when you were a kid and you were supposed to write a story for school, but
18:30you got a little too weird and couldn't think up a decent ending so you just wrote, and
18:34then she woke up, and it was all a dream?
18:36Dallas, an incredibly popular primetime soap opera, did that to an entire season in 1989,
18:43swerving viewers with a twist so profoundly ridiculous that it could have easily come
18:47from the mind of a bored 10-year-old who didn't feel like finishing their homework.
18:50So why, exactly, did the show's writers decide that a grade-school-level plot device was
18:55the right way to wrap up their ninth season?
18:57Because back in Season 8, star Patrick Duffy decided he was too big for Dallas.
19:02The writers sent him off with a bang, or rather a flip, killing his character after tumbling
19:06over a speeding car.
19:07A year later, he changed his mind.
19:10According to Duffy himself, he was asked to come back, but feel free to take that with
19:13a grain of salt.
19:14Either way, the producers came up with a spectacularly clever way to bring him back, and just erased
19:19the entire ninth season by explaining it away as someone's dream, having Duffy's character
19:24show up in a shower like nothing had happened.
19:27The show limped ahead for a couple more seasons, but the damage had been done.
19:31Viewers just couldn't stomach the stupidity of the plot twist, and the ratings never recovered.
19:35In early 2000, Fox decided to ride the reality show craze to success with some wildly over-the-top
19:41ideas, including the hugely popular special Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?
19:45About, well, you can probably guess from the title.
19:49There were immediately plans for a sequel, but by February, Fox announced it was killing
19:53its plans to produce a follow-up because of some bad press about star Rick Rockwell, namely
19:58allegations that he was A, a jerk, B, a liar, and C, probably not actually a multi-millionaire.
20:04Among Rockwell's transgressions was an accusation by a past girlfriend of physical abuse, which
20:09led to a restraining order.
20:10The real estate developer, failed stand-up comedian, and self-proclaimed motivational
20:14speaker also seemed to have lied about at least one part of his resume.
20:18Several venues he claimed to have a history with revealed that he had never actually performed
20:22for them.
20:23My girlfriend left me.
20:24Just like, well, I'm a comedian, it's mandatory.
20:27Perhaps most damning of all, it eventually came out that he wasn't really living the
20:31gold-plated lifestyle most of us associate with multi-millionaires.
20:35His 1,200-square-foot ranch home in California was pretty far from Beverly Hills, and the
20:39backyard was decorated with an old toilet.
20:42In case you're curious, the unlucky bride who won on the show, Darva Conger, had the
20:46marriage annulled just seven weeks after exchanging vows, and you can't really blame her.
20:51Even if he actually had the piles of money that he claimed, which he didn't, the real
20:55treasure here was about a million red flags.