After Netflix unveiled a sparkly look at many of its biggest upcoming projects during Geeked Week, the week will sadly end with news of another likely cancellation.
At the start of the week, news broke that Midnight Gospel, a critically-acclaimed animated adventure, would not be returning for a second season. The show's axing comes as part of a growing trend for the streamer, which is slashing its animated projects en masse, and it appears another show has bitten the dust.
According to What's On Netflix, a news website that prides itself on keeping up-to-date with the latest comings and goings at the streamer, Adventure Beast, another adult-focused animation, will not be returning for a second season.
The website has reached out to the show's makers, and, while it's not used the word 'canceled', the response was very definite, saying: "At this stage, Netflix has no plans to produce season 2, unfortunately.”
Set over 12 episodes, Adventure Beast followed an animated version of Bradley Trevor Grieve, a real-life naturalist and explorer, who played a fictionalized version of himself in the series.
The show showcased the adventures of Grieve, his anxious assistant and his over-confident niece as they headed to weird and wonderful locations to save various wild beasts.
Unlike Midnight Gospel, which critics liked, Adventure Beast had a more mixed reaction, with a score of just 5.2 on IMDb, but clearly Grieve and co had hoped to make more.
An undeniable trend...
Both Adventure Beast and Midnight Gospel aired in 2020 and have quietly been in limbo with Netflix for quite some time, with news of their demise only coming in recent days. But, Netflix's commitment to animated projects is clearly on the wane.
Netflix's Director of Creative Leadership and Development for Original Animation, Phil Rynda, left the company at the end of April, and since then it has been a bloodbath for planned and current projects.
Roald Dahl's The Twits, which had been announced with great fanfare, was axed, as were new series based on Jeff Smith's beloved comic book series Bone, Lauren Faust's Toil and Trouble and Wings Of Fire, which was being overseen by Selma's Ava DuVernay.
Meghan Markle's animated epic Pearl, the first offering from Netflix's hugely-expensive team-up with the Duchess, also got canned.
As well as that, the streamer decided to shelve more education-orientated animated programming with Antiracist Baby, an animated series aimed at very young children, and With Kind Regards From Kindergarten, which was a movie pointed towards the same demographic. Both projects were canceled before they left development.
Netflix isn't done with animation, mind you. Yesterday (June 9), the streamer announced a new animated take on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, a sequel to hit festive animation Klaus and a big screen version of Richard Curtis' children's book, That Christmas.
While these projects all sound like sure-fire hits, we'll have to keep an eye on their progress. After all, you'd have thought the clout of a real-life princess might get something into production, but Netflix had other plans...
