Prime Video Cancels 'Wheel of Time' After 3 Seasons
Image Source: IGN
Another one bites the dust. After only three seasons, The Wheel of Time has come to an end on Prime Video.
It’s one of those weird, shocking-yet-unshocking cancellations. On the one hand, the show is a resounding success, especially this most recent season, which has a whopping 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Season three consistently ranked in the top 10 of the Nielsen charts.
That was apparently not enough for one of, if not the, world’s wealthiest companies, valued at well over two trillion dollars. The show’s hefty price tag, which is well short of the nearly one billion dollar investment The Rings of Power is likely to cost, was the proverbial nail in the coffin for cancelling the show.
If metrics were a predictor of the success of a show and whether it would see more than three seasons, it would be a science by now. However, there is no clear-cut reason why the show was canceled. Companies deploy PR drones to put out a statement, and they can say anything, and we have to take them at their word, but the reality is likely different or tangential. The show is a critical success. The viewership numbers were there, but they’re citing “perceived” viewership drops. The price tag is understandable, but this is a company worth 2.13 trillion dollars. This show’s production costs are rounding errors for that kind of money. If viewership were really a concern, then The Last of Us would be seeing the chopping block because season two viewership has dropped significantly.
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In all likelihood, this just reminds us that despite film being an art form, it’s a business in this reality, and the almighty bottom line reigns supreme, never mind what it says about our culture that so many stories go unfinished. *cough* Firefly *cough*
This is not without hope, however, as there is a fan effort to get the show renewed or picked up elsewhere. It worked for The Expanse, but in that case, it was the other way around, and the behemoth picked it up for distribution. It’s unclear if there is another studio out there willing to pick up a show that is supposedly this costly. It also makes the prequel movie’s existence highly suspect at this point.
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Source(s): EW
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