The Reason Behind Westworld Cancelation Was Devastatingly Trivial
The rise and fall of Westworld; this is how one could describe what happened to one of HBO's most talked about sci-fi series.
Its viewership shrank threefold – from 12 million to only 4 million within 6 years – and the network decided to discontinue the show after Season 4. HBO has a new favorite now, House of the Dragon, which may be similar in terms of expenses, but Westworld is nowhere close if you look at the viewership numbers. Enter the cost benefit model.
Back in 2016 J.J. Abrams told The Hollywood Reporter that the production value was simply preposterous.
"It's HBO. That's what they do," one of the show's executive producers put it. "The expense is one thing, but the results are entirely onscreen. The cast is extraordinary, and the writers and directors wanted to maximize that sense of a cinematic experience. It's not a cheap show to make, but it doesn't hurt the eyes to look at," he said.
But it looks like all of these AAA ingredients did not help to retain the viewers and build a solid fan base over the years.
Redditors armed with their keyboards did not hesitate to discuss the Westworld cancellation, too. A lot of commentators believe the gap between the seasons was too big to keep the viewers interested; after all, a 2 years break does indeed look like a chasm. One of the commentators said that they could hardly remember what happened in Season 2 finale after Season 3 was finally out. It was Anthony Hopkins who held the series together, many fans believe, and once the character was killed off, the show simply became meaningless.
Season 1 was exceptional and ended in a perfect way for a sci-fi story, asking philosophical questions about humanity; but the next season reused this idea and introduced a myriad of new characters and twists, so people just got confused and dropped out. So, this is when Westworld started losing its viewers, comments on Reddit suggest.
It was recently reported that despite the cancellation of Season 5 the core cast of the show – Evan Rachel Wood (Dolores Abernathy), Thandiwe Newton (Maeve Millay), Jeffrey Wright (Bernard Lowe), Ed Harris (Man in Black) and Aaron Paul (Caleb Nichols) – will still get paid because they have pay-or-play deals with the network.
HBO's Westworld is the Emmy-winning dystopian sci-fi drama series about the rise of the machines in a futuristic Wild West-themed amusement park. The show is based on the Michael Crichton book and the 1973 movie of the same name and was created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. The series premiered in October 2016.