Sci Fi TV Update: Status updates, news, and developments on sci fi and fantasy television. For breaking news, be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site
Welcome to the Sci Fi TV Update
This marks the beginning of a new weekly column on CancelledSciFi.com that will be replacing the Weekly Roundup posts. The Sci Fi TV Update will cover status updates on the current sci fi and fantasy shows, ratings results where available, and news of note. The focus will be less on the ratings seeing as I no longer have a consistent source for that data now that ShowBuzzDaily has shut down. But I will continue to monitor the news and information coming out of the entertainment industry, while also looking at what numbers are available, to best gauge the renewal/cancellation prospects of the shows currently airing. The plan is for this column to become a weekly digest rounding up the news and developments of note from the past week concerning sci fi TV.
For the first instalment, there is not much to report on linear ratings (there is an update on digital ratings below, though). Currently, it is mostly just CW shows airing, and almost all of their genre entries have been renewed. And since it is the Summer months, the ratings will be low, though that will not necessarily impact the status of the shows on that network. Freeform’s Motherland Fort Salem did slip onto the schedule this week with little notice, but it will be a couple of weeks before I have ratings for that one. My current source is ProgrammingInsider,com, and if they report the ratings for a cable show it is not until the delayed viewing numbers are available. Those stats are more important for the shows on those channels anyway, though, so it is probably best to wait for the numbers.
Digital Ratings
Lucifer jumped to the top of the Nielsen Streaming charts for the week May 24th to May 30th. The second half of that show’s fifth season debuted that week and pulled in an estimated 1.3 billion minutes of viewing. Prior seasons of that show had already been in the lower rungs of the Top 10 the last few weeks as anticipation for the premiere of Season 5B grew. The second most-watched streaming original for the week was Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead on Netflix which had 786 million minutes of viewing. These stats are based on the consolidated rankings across originals, acquired shows, and movies on the streaming services tracked by Nielsen (you can see the full Top 10 at this link). The more expanded rankings that break those three categories out were not published by The Hollywood Reporter this week like they usually are.
The Nielsen Streaming Ratings rank the shows/movies on Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, and Hulu based on the number of minutes watched during the week by U.S. viewers on television sets (mobile devices are not included at this point). The numbers are extrapolated based on the Nielsen sampling of families who have meters monitoring their viewing habits. Also note, shows with more episodes available will tend to have a higher number of minutes watched.
Renewals And Cancellations
NBC announced the cancellation of its lost-airplane drama Manifest last week after three seasons (more on that at this link), though there were hopes that the show would jump to Netflix where encore runs of Season 1 and 2 are performing quite well. But according to Deadline, negotiations have ended and the streamer has passed on the show. Fans are still fighting for it, though, and perhaps it could switch to HBO Max seeing as it comes from Warner Bros. TV.
While other networks have been in the business of cancelling lately, Hulu has given a renewal to two of its originals. The Hardy Boys will be returning for a second season even though that show did not register high in viewing nor make much buzz during its first season. Apparently Hulu is being patient with that one which is what we used to see from Netflix before it got the cancellation fever. In addition, Hulu’s hit animated comedy Solar Opposites has received an early fourth season renewal. That show’s second season made it into the Nielsen Streaming Top 10 and it had already received an early greenlight for a third year. The third and fourth seasons will consist of twelve episodes each (up from eight for the first two seasons), and the show will likely return with new eps in early 2022.
Sci Fi TV Development
A Supernatural spin-off is currently in the works at The CW with Jensen Ackles and Danneel Ackles attached. To be titled The Winchesters, it will act as a prequel to the long-running series and will focus on the monster-hunting activities of Sam and Dean’s mother and father. Jensen will act as narrator of the series and his wife Danneel will have a recurring role (likely not the same character she played in the main series). It is unlikely that Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Samantha Smith will reprise their roles as John and Mary Winchester since the series will focus on younger versions of the characters. The show currently has a script commitment from the network. Two previous spin-offs were attempted–Bloodlines and fan-favorite Wayward Sisters–both of which aired as episodes of the series.
AMC is looking to start up its next major franchise and has a television adaptation of Ann Rice’s Interview With a Vampire in the works. The cable network picked up the rights to the property in 2020, and an eight-episode first season is in development with Rolin Jones (The Exorcist) attached as showrunner. The network also has the rights to the related book series Mayfair Witches and is planning a multi-show universe similar to what it has done with The Walking Dead.
More Sci Fi TV News of Note
Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum are working on an animated continuation of Smallville which originally ran for ten seasons on The WB and The CW. No network is attached at this point and there are few details on the series, but if it does move forward expect it to land on either The CW or HBO Max . . . An animated adaptation of the Strange Planet comic strip has received a direct-to-series order from Apple TV+. It follows aliens from another planet trying to deal with the everyday situations of normal human life . . . FX has given an order to the limited sci fi series Class of ’09 which comes from the creators of American Crime Story. Starring Brian Tyree Henry and Kate Mara, the series will be “following a class of FBI agents set in a near future where the U.S. criminal justice system has been transformed by artificial intelligence”. The current plan is for the show to stream on FX on Hulu. Be sure to follow r/SciFiTV for news, schedule updates, trailers, discussions, and more.
Network Scorecards
With ratings information now hard to come by as well as the fact that those numbers have become less reliable at predicting the fate of a show in the current television environment, I am looking for new ways to gauge the renewal chances of sci fi and fantasy shows. And one of these will be network scorecards that I will be putting together for the linear channels and streaming services. These will look at how often sci fi TV shows are cancelled by a network compared to their other scripted programming as well as how likely the channel is to greenlight development of new genres entries (the quality of the network’s output will be considered as well). I have already put up the first scorecard at this link and plan on putting out one to two a week through the Summer in order to have all of the major networks covered by the time the Fall season starts. Be sure to give these a look as I have compiled information that you will not find anywhere else out on the Internet, and these should provide some insight as to how likely a show is to get renewed by the network on which it airs.
Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and keep up with what is airing/streaming each week with our Weekly Listings.
I feel the need to point out that the Zack Snyder movie is called “Army of the Dead”. Army of Darkness is, of course, the third Evil Dead film.
Oops, must have had Bruce Campbell on the brain! Thanks for the heads up and it is corrected now.