Almost as soon as it was announced that Fox was cancelling the DC Comics/Vertigo television series Lucifer, there was a massive public outcry to save the series. Over the course of three seasons, fans fell in love with Tom Ellis’ charming take on the character and the rest of the quirky cast of the supernatural drama series.
What’s more, the decision to cancel the series seemed all the more baffling, given that the final moments of the finale finally gave fans what they had been waiting for for the past three years: Lauren German’s Detective Chloe Decker found out the truth — the real truth — about Lucifer, after seeing his devil face. And yet, Fox still opted to cancel the series, leaving fans all over the world enraged.
Now, after more three months, we finally know why. Speaking at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour this Thursday, chairman and CEO of Fox Television Group Dana Walden revealed why the network chose to cancel the fan-favorite series.
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“We had a great time working with that cast and the executive producers of the show,” Walden said. “It worked well for us. [But] as we were going into this season, we looked at the size of the audience, which was starting to get pretty narrow. We just made a determination that given… It was owned by an outside studio, at the time we couldn’t justify the economics. It was not an inexpensive show, and we just made a decision that ultimately it wasn’t performing to a broad enough audience in a way that worked for us.”
Thankfully for fans, Netflix would swoop in at the eleventh hour and rescue the series from cancellation. Interestingly, the reason Fox wound up cancelling the series is the opposite of why Netflix saved it. A few days ago, Cindy Holland, vice president of original series at Netflix, revealed at the TCA’s that Lucifer was saved because it “has really resonated with audiences in parts of the world where we licensed it so we felt it was important to help that show continue for those fans.”
Perhaps fans weren’t tuning in on Fox to watch the series, but as the show grew, it truly became a worldwide phenomenon. Now, thanks to Netflix, Lucifer will get to spreads its wings once more.
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Seasons 1 to 3 of Lucifer are currently available to be streamed on Hulu. Season 4 of the series will be available to stream on Netflix when Lucifer returns. Although there is no official release date yet, the new season is expected to drop in the first half of 2019.
(via TVGuide)
