Netflix have been nothing short of ruthless when it comes to wielding the axe this year with a huge volume of shows being canceled, including established favorite GLOW, which was widely regarded as one of the streaming service’s finest in-house originals. New projects have been especially vulnerable and I Am Not Okay With This, The Society, Teenage Bounty Hunters, The Big Show Show, October Faction and V Wars are just some of the recent titles to have bitten the dust after a single season.
Big budget sci-fi Away is the latest to be canceled, which came as a surprise when reports had been making the rounds that the show had actually been renewed. Not only that, but it featured heavily in the Top 10 most-watched list for a number of weeks, but because nobody seems entirely sure how Netflix determine whether or not something is worth continuing, speculation instantly turned to the budget.
The company is rumored to be in the midst of vast cost cutting measures to combat the financial effects of the Coronavirus pandemic, and even if you’ve only seen one episode of Away, it was abundantly clear that it looked like a very expensive show to produce. Whatever the real reason may be behind the cancellation, we’ll probably never know, but star Hilary Swank has now publicly commented on the news in a heartfelt social media post, which you can check out below.
It would appear that very few major Netflix shows are guaranteed their safety anymore, unless of course we’re talking about marquee properties like Stranger Things, The Witcher or The Umbrella Academy, and it certainly seems like a lot more small screen offerings have been canceled than renewed this year, as the content library continues to shift its focus towards quality over quantity.