Cancellation Watch: FOX Cancels Fantasy/Drama Hieroglyph Before it Begins, Starz Picks Up American Gods, Community Season 6 Goes to Yahoo

Word came down this week that FOX will not move forward with the fantasy/drama series Hieroglyph which looked like it was going for a Game of Thrones in Ancient Egypt spin.  The project was ordered straight to series (meaning they skipped the pilot stage) and was slated to land on the network’s schedule at mid-season.  However, the preview trailer received a tepid response at the upfronts (where the networks present their schedules to the sponsors) and apparently FOX has been unhappy with how things have been progressing since then.  It’s unclear whether any episodes of the show were completed and I see nothing specific on why the network abandoned the project.  It’s possible it could have been going over budget or experiencing production delays or simply that the network did not like what they saw and decided not to throw any more money at the project.  There’s a chance they could try to salvage what footage has been completed and put together a movie-of-the-week (which will likely be aired at a time when nobody is tuning in), or the studio could try to shop it around to other interested parties.  Or this could become another on of those many lost shows that never sees the light of day.  I will be sure to post any updates, though, if any further activity surfaces around the ill-fated series.

And speaking of abandoned TV shows, HBO had previously passed on a television adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods because–as president of programming Michael Lombardo explained–“we couldn’t craft the script as good as we needed it to be”.  But apparently competing premium channel Starz believes they are up to the task as they have decided to pick up the project and bring it to the small screen.  Former Heroes alumni Bryan Fuller and Michael Green will be the showrunners and will executive produce along with author Gaiman.  And with Fuller also working on Hannibal–which was recently renewed for a third season–Pushing Daisies fans can shelve any hopes of the long promised revival of that series happening any time soon.

Several weeks back I noted that streaming service Hulu was in talks with Sony to pick up NBC’s recently cancelled Community for a sixth season.  Well apparently those talks broke down and now Yahoo has stepped in as the show’s savior.  They have signed a deal with Sony to produce a thirteen episode sixth season of the show which they will air exclusively on their service.  This is a bold move by Yahoo and I don’t know if this represents a step toward them jumping into the original programming game.  But before fans start directing their Save My Show campaigns toward Yahoo, note that sitcoms are relatively inexpensive to produce and Sony likely gave it to them for next to nothing just to pad out the Community episode order and make it more attractive to the syndication market.  The chances of Yahoo picking up a cancelled show like Revolution, Almost Human, or even Star-Crossed are incredibly small.