Another Hit Netflix Series Officially Canned After Just One Season
The Netflix science fiction mystery thriller 1899 has been canceled after one season.
It seems that while Taylor Sheridan can get away with naming shows after years, the same can’t be said of everyone. Netflix’s acclaimed science fiction mystery thriller series 1899 has been canceled after one season. Series creators Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar updated Instagram with the bad news on Monday.
Netflix premiered 1899 this past November, to generally positive reviews from critics. The series follows a group of passengers traveling across the Atlantic on their way to New York City. When they find another seemingly abandoned ship adrift in the Atlantic, things take a nightmarish turn.
Considering how successful the series was among Netflix’s viewership, it’s a little surprising that 1899 didn’t make the grade. The series held steady at the #2 spot on Netflix’s Top 10 English language series for the first 3 weeks after its release. But while with more and more series from the streamer getting canceled it may be tempting to blame Netflix, it’s possible this time they might not be the ones who gave a thumbs down.
As reported by the Goethe-Institut, Netflix’s 1899 is the most expensive German made television series of all time. While the bulk of the show’s budget (in the neighborhood of $62 million) comes from the streamer, it’s also partly funded by the German Motion Picture Fund and the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg; the body that governs the funding of screen projects made in Berlin and/or Brandenburg. It’s possible it was one of these other sources of funding that dried up, though Netflix seems the most likely.
Four years before Squid Game became one of the biggest hits of the streaming age, Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar — the creators of Netflix’s 1899 — made a huge splash on the streamer with the science fiction thriller Dark. Drawing positive comparisons to both Twin Peaks and Stranger Things, Dark proved to be one of the first definitive non-English language hits for the streamer. It was largely in part due to the success of Dark that Netflix began to invest more in projects produced outside of the United States; leading to success stories like Squid Game, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, and All of Us Are Dead.
We don’t know yet what Firese and Bo Odar have in store now that Netflix will not be giving 1899 the same second and third seasons that they were allowed for Dark. With its cancellation, 1899 joins the unhappy list of recent series cut from the streamer; including Blockbuster, Warrior Nun, and The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself.
While Netflix’s 1899 was acclaimed by reviewers and fans, it wasn’t without its controversy. In November, it was reported that the series was being accused of plagiarizing the Brazilian comic book Black Silence. Mary Cagnin, who created the comic, pointed out the similarities between her stories and the series on social media.
