Netflix Cancels 'Luke Cage'
by EG
Netflix has no canceled two of its heavily hyped Marvel series - Iron Fist and Luke Cage - leaving just Daredevil and the Jessica Jones to carry on the streamer's original plan to construct a complex web of Marvel-based series. Read on for details.
Via NBC News.
It is a truth universally acknowledged — when a company (or politician) wants to bury an embarrassing story, it's released on Friday afternoon, after most people have tuned out for the weekend. The practice has become so widespread it even has a name: the Friday night news dump. Netflix must’ve really wanted to bury the news that it was canceling “Iron Fist” and “Luke Cage” — two of the four original TV series commissioned from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2013 — because news of the former broke first last Friday, Oct. 12 at 9 p.m. ET, and the latter didn't become widely known until this Friday night at 10 p.m. ET.
Marvel fans should be worried. The Netflix shows are not without their flaws, but allowing them to die would be a real loss for the genre.
The timing is not great for Netflix, which released the third season of sibling show “Daredevil” on Friday, Oct. 19. The bigger problem here is that Netflix originally designed these shows to intersect but has been inconsistent in doing so, leaving some storylines feeling unmoored. It was an interesting experiment, but for it to successfully continue, Netflix will have to figure out a way for the various plots to stand on their own — and more interesting ways to get them to work together. If Netflix can’t find a way to do this, Marvel’s parent company Disney is liable to dominate the superhero landscape on TV going forward as their new streaming service becomes the (much more family friendly) choice for Marvel starting in 2019.
There are already Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) shows on several different networks, most of which are at least partially owned by Disney. Netflix is the only non-Disney owned company currently producing MCU series. This is due in large part to Netflix’s unparalleled commitment to the Marvel community, as the ambitious slate of interlocking plotlines proves.
Get the rest of the story at NBC News.
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