0/5

Axed: The Expanse

Popular space drama fails to win a renewal, but producers hope to sell it elsewhere.

Syfy has axed space drama The Expanse after three seasons.

The US drama, which airs in Australia on Netflix, has been averaging 1m viewers for the US cable channel. Syfy only had broadcast rights in the US making it heavily reliant on Live audiences.

The Expanse transported us across the solar system for three brilliant seasons of television,” said Chris McCumber, President, Entertainment Networks for NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. “Everyone at Syfy is a massive fan of the series, and this was an incredibly difficult decision. We want to sincerely thank The Expanse’s amazing cast, crew and all the dedicated creatives who helped bring James S.A. Corey’s story to life. And to the series’ loyal fans, we thank you most of all.”

But Alcon Television Group, which fully finances and produces the series, plans to shop it to other buyers.

“We are very disappointed the show will not be returning to Syfy,” said Alcon Entertainment co-founders and co-CEOs Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson. “We respect Syfy’s decision to end this partnership but given the commercial and critical success of the show, we fully plan to pursue other opportunities for this terrific and original IP.”

Season 3 is yet to screen in Australia on Netflix.

Source: Deadline

8 Responses

  1. I cant really say I’m all that surprised The Expanse was cancelled, the production costs would have killed it off eventually especially if SyFy relied on domestic U.S. audiences who are not big fans of space dramas without the sexy charismatic actors in the main roles, The Expanse had some gritty driven characters but non likely to gain a sex symbol following and the story did not have that comic book quality seen in other low budget sci-fi shows.It must be remembered that Star Trek suffered a similar fate and survived on it’s international cult following I’d like to think the same may happen to The Expanse but the fate of other similar shows suggests this may not happen, especially as Netflix have quite a few big budget shows on their list at the moment.

  2. This is yet another example as to why traditional broadcast and cable TV distribution models just don’t work for sci-fi shows. The US audience for such shows is too small to justify the cost but the world-wide audience is more than sufficient (Firefly was an early example of this – cancelled in the US before it gained a cult following world-wide months later).

    By only releasing in the US first with staggered release in the rest of the world, the bulk of the audience is left out of the decision when the hammer falls. Netflix and Amazon will own this space pretty soon since they release everywhere at once and have better metrics for gauging audience interest.

    The traditional broadcasters need to stop being stupid and embrace world-wide same-day release as well. Or they’ll go extinct. Can’t happen soon enough.

    Hopefully Netflix will pick up The Expanse, but given how much…

  3. While I’m looking forward to S3 later this year, I’m sad to see it end. For mine its easily the best SyFy space genre series in the last few years.
    Maybe Netflix, who bankroll quite a lot of “average” series could invest some of my subscription dollars 🙂

    1. The decisions the SyFy channel make on shows I can’t fathom at times. They produce so much garbage and when they finally do a proper full on true sci fi show, they don’t follow through on it. I dropped the entertainment plus package through Foxtel, which had the SyFy channel and now go to Netflix for my sci fi fix. Netflix has really improved in this area, so let’s hope they can produce a season 4 of the Expanse.

Leave a Reply