Look! Up in the sky! Last week, following Syfy’s announcement of the cancellation of beloved series ‘The Expanse’ after three seasons, fans coughed up the dough (thanks to GoFundMe) to fly a plane over Amazon headquarters with a banner that read “#savetheexpanse.” (They attempted more modest pitches to Netflix.) One of the writers of ‘The Expanse’ tweeted a short video of the event:
We’re here & it’s incredible. Our fans, everyone banding together, you’re incredible. We’re emotional & we’re humbled & we’re thankful. No matter what happens, we are ALL part of something special. Thank you. 🙏✨ #TheExpanse #SaveTheExpanse pic.twitter.com/MuGQdrLWYk
— The Expanse Writers (@TheExpanseWR) May 15, 2018
Well… it worked! Amazon is reportedly in final negotiations to revive ‘The Expanse’ for a fourth season and hopefully more. It helps that Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos is a massive fan and that the service already had exclusive streaming rights to the show in the US. At one point, apparently, there was a chance that Amazon could have acquired the show from the start and that Bezo was furious when it went to Syfy, which is owned by NBC Universal.
Amazon would neither confirm nor deny the negotiations, as the deal is not finalized, but with all of these factors, things look good.
For many years, Syfy had become a joke, synonymous with terrible, low budget junk like ‘Arachnoquake’ and ‘Jersey Shore Shark Attack’. (Although, they unexpectedly struck gold with the equally schlocky ‘Sharknado’ franchise.) In an effort to distance themselves from the cheap, awful reputation they had earned, Syfy decided to roll up their sleeves and refocus on true original science fiction projects and ‘The Expanse’ was one of their first entries into this arena. (’12 Monkeys’ and ‘The Magicians’ were the other two in this initial crop.) The show was critically acclaimed and episodes regularly ranked 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
It looks like ‘The Expanse’ fell victim to the same Kryptonite that kills off many other sci-fi shows. Syfy didn’t own it. It was expensive to produce. And ratings just weren’t high enough to make it cost effective.
The show was based on James S.A. Corey’s series of novels. Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby developed the TV series, which initially starred Thomas Jane as detective Josephus “Joe” Aloisus Miller. (Jane left after season one.) The series also starred Steven Strait, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Cas Anvar, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Shawn Doyle and Frankie Adams. In addition to its high quality, ‘The Expanse’ was praised for its diverse cast.
Once the fine details are hammered down and Amazon makes an official announcement, we will update you. In the meantime, are you glad that Amazon has rescued ‘The Expanse’?
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
