The Real Reason Netflix Just Went and Canceled The Midnight Club So Abruptly

Summary

• Mike Flanagan is the creator of excellent horror projects that have often become flagship series for Netflix.
• However, The Midnight Club, which was released in 2022, was canceled after one season.
• Flanagan believes the reason is that Netflix didn't promote the show enough, even though the concept called for more audience engagement.

When we hear Mike Flanagan’s name, we instantly assume that we are in for a thrilling journey into the world of the horror genre. Flanagan has brought Netflix immense popularity through consistently successful projects. His first collaboration with the streaming giant was the critically acclaimed adaptation of Stephen King 's novel Gerald's Game.

This was followed by the haunted mansion-style series The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, as well as what many fans consider the pinnacle of the genre, Midnight Mass. The latter has garnered an entire cult following for its suspense, vivid acting, thoughtful monologues, and philosophical musings on religion and existentialism. Each of the projects listed has a score of at least 85%.

However, among such an impressive list of horror projects, there is one series that was well received by critics but was a disappointment for fans. We are talking about The Midnight Club, which was released in 2022. Even though the series was designed for more than one season, Netflix, despite the big name of the creator, who brought the service huge money, canceled the project.

Let's find out why the series of horror messiah Mike Flanagan was suddenly canceled by Netflix.

What Was the Midnight Club About?

While filming the hit Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher, based on the famous novels of Edgar Allan Poe, Flanagan was developing an adaptation of another influential writer in the horror genre, Christopher Pike. Loosely based on Pike's novel of the same name, The Midnight Club was a much smaller project than Ushers, but no less intriguing.

The plot followed a group of terminally ill young people who spend their evenings in a hospice telling each other horror stories — after all, what could they be afraid of when the reality turned out to be much dreadful? Only their midnights take a scarier, more supernatural turn.

The Real Reason Why It Has Been Axed

Many speculated that the show's cancellation was motivated not so much by low ratings and mixed reviews, but by Flanagan's conflict with Netflix over the former's decision to move to Amazon Studios. However, as the filmmaker himself noted, it was more about the streaming service's marketing strategy.

'Oh, no, I don't think was a response to us leaving. We're very disappointed. Of course you always want a show that you designed to be ongoing to go on. As part of a lot of the changes that happened at Netflix over the last few years, we noticed in particular that the strategy with which they roll out new shows has undergone a lot of change,' Flanagan told Deadline.

Unfortunately, it's nothing new for Netflix to cancel promising projects due to low ratings, even if they didn't mount a meaningful promotional campaign themselves, and the change in strategy to promote the series negatively affected The Midnight Club.

'When we agreed to do The Midnight Club, the entire company was very different. I think we both feel it's safe to say that a show like that, which we thought was innovative and harder to classify, requires some pretty robust promotion to get off the ground properly, and Netflix's strategy for promoting new shows has changed quite a bit. So we weren't entirely surprised at all.'

Well, while we'll probably never see a sequel to The Midnight Club, Flanagan has outlined the story's conclusion on his own Tumblr page. Also, a new Mike Flanagan adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower is coming to Prime.

Source: Deadline.