The first genre casualty of “Black Friday” has fallen as FOX has cancelled its vampire-pocalypse drama The Passage after one season. That show debuted in January to decent same day ratings, but saw those drop pretty quickly to marginal levels. It did see some gains in delayed viewing, but apparently not enough to convince the network to keep it around for a second season. The property had been in development for years at 20th Century Fox, initially starting out as a potential feature film. After several years with no progress, development switched to the small screen but it took several attempts to finally get the series up and running. Now that Disney has bought up the FOX entertainment properties, the Mouse House has less invested in the series and apparently less interest in keeping a moderate performer on the air. The cancellation was expected seeing as the FOX TV network no longer has a stake in the show and will have fewer slots on its schedule for scripted programming with wrestling taking up one night starting in Fall. Fans may want to stage a Call to Action to convince Disney to keep the show going, perhaps on Hulu, but I believe it will take a pretty large show of support across the social networks to have any success.
In The Passage, a group of scientists try to find a cure for an outbreak that is spreading quickly across the planet. But this “cure” creates a new species of vampiric humans who have plans to take the Earth for themselves. One girl, who has been injected with the vampire virus but has not turned, may be the key to saving humanity. It stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Saniyya Sidney, Jamie McShane, Caroline Chikezie, and Emmanuelle Chriqui and is based on the series of novels by Justin Croninwill.
We have reached “Black Friday”, the day when the broadcast networks typically announce most of their final renewals and cancellations. You can see my rundown of where all the sci fi and fantasy shows currently stand at this link. And be sure to keep a close eye on this site over the next few days for breaking news on these and other shows. Also, head over to Twitter to join the #CancelledSciFiArmy and help bolster our ranks as we fight to save our sci fi and fantasy shows.
More from CancelledSciFi.com:
Keep up with the ratings developments and the status of all the currently airing sci fi and fantasy shows with our Weekly Roundup posts. And join the #CancelledSciFiArmy on Twitter to bolster our ranks and help us fight for the struggling and cancelled sci fi and fantasy shows.
Check out our Sci Fi TV Schedule for debut and season finale dates and follow our Weekly Listings for a rundown of the shows airing in the current week.
