LOSER: The Duffer Brothers: First, the final season of Stranger Things — a massive ratings success that it was — was pretty roundly knocked for being an exposition-stuffed slog. Now Matt and Ross Duffer’s spiritual successor series, the “Stranger Things with seniors” drama The Boroughs, was canceled just one month after its premiere, which seems … rather aggressive considering the Duffers created the biggest show in the streamer’s history in total hours viewed and were almost certainly responsible for driving more subscribers to the company than any other creative team.
Also, the streamer’s executives frequently take their sweet time to make such decisions, especially when a series has a 97 percent positive Rotten Tomatoes’ critics score and a 79 percent audience score. Sources close to the decision point to the show’s somewhat modest ratings versus the show’s high production cost. Fair enough, but it’s difficult to imagine Netflix executing this rug-pull if the Duffers hadn’t jumped ship to Paramount.
Here’s what’s funny about this: Netflix could have waited two more days to try and bury the cancellation news right before the holiday weekend — as studios famously do when wanting to protect the feelings of talent (an insider cites a deadline to extend the cast’s options as a reason for the decision’s timing, but the company likely could have hustled to keep the news under wraps for another 48 hours). Instead, Netflix knifed The Boroughs two days after Paramount announced its “Mystery Event Movie” with the Duffers, blowing those positive Duffer Brothers headlines out of the water. Guess that $2.8 billion fee Paramount paid Netflix after their merger collapsed didn’t buy any warm feelings. In both cases, Netflix doesn’t seem to handle break-ups particularly well (“Matt and Ross, I thought we having a nice date!”). It’s unclear if Netflix’s cancellation timing was intended as a double middle finger salute to the Duffers and Paramount but … stranger things have happened.
