In a late news break last night, FOX announced that their supernatural series Sleepy Hollow will not be coming back for a fifth season. The comes as no surprise seeing as it is one of the network’s lowest rated shows and the once-dedicated fans appear to have mostly abandoned it after that major character death at the end of its third season. The show seemed headed for cancellation last year as it has experienced notable ratings drops, but the network elected to bring it back for a fourth season and put it through a reboot of sorts. The claim at the time was that it played well internationally and was already profitable for the network. With that intangible in place, I have kept the show at On the Bubble status all season upon the assumption that its international audience could save it again and/or that FOX might want one more season to wrap up its storylines to play better in binge-sessions on the streaming services. But as I said previously, I considered it right on the line of Cancellation Likely status, so this move by the network is not surprising. It will end its run with 62 episodes which will not be as attractive for the domestic syndication market, but it should live on in an encore run internationally and on one or more of the streaming services.
Sleepy Hollow follows Ichabod Crane who is revived in the modern world and paired with a police detective to do battle with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If was created by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci and stars Tom Mison, Nicole Beharie, Orlando Jones, and Janina Gavankar.
Next week the broadcast networks will have their Upfront presentations when they unveil their schedules for the 2017-18 season which means the we can expect plenty of renewal and cancellation announcements over the next seven days or so (you can see the full rundown of this season’s cancellations and renewals at this link). Be sure to stay tuned to this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for updates and breaking news.
