Apple TV+ just canceled two original series after their first season – High Desert and Monster Factory. Both series came with generally positive reviews but apparently not enough viewers to sustain them. Fans on social media are mourning both productions and hoping that they might get revived elsewhere.
The news that both High Desert and Monster Factory were canceled came from the stars, not from Apple TV+ or any other studio executives. On Thursday, wrestling coach Danny Cage broke the news to his Twitter followers that Monster Factory is canceled, writing: “Everyone who watches Monster Factory on Apple TV loves it! Problem is not enough watch it. Those are the breaks. No Season 2. Thanks for everyone who helped out and supported us. But unless some real cosmic s- goes down it’s much like my honeymoon. One and done!”
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Meanwhile, High Desert star Patricia Arquette announced her show’s cancellation in a video on Instagram. She said: “A lot of you have asked about High Desert and if there was going to be a second season. So I just wanted to let you know, we just found out that it won’t be coming back. So that’s a sad bummer for us all… You can’t win ’em all.”
Monster Factory is a docu-series about Cage training six up-and-coming wrestlers, with appearances by alumni from the school and other stars in the pro wrestling world. Meanwhile, High Desert is a scripted comedy starring Arquette as an addict trying to find a fresh start after the death of her mother whom she lived with in California. The latter has fans particularly heartbroken because the one existing season ends on a cliffhanger that now may never be resolved.
Fans are calling on other streamers or networks to revive the shows in the comments and on social media, but so far there has been no substantive news any attempts to do so. Petitions campaigning to revive canceled shows have had some results in the past, though it’s not clear how much fans’ input has influenced those decisions. However, in its current state the industry may not support big risks like that anymore, as CBS CEO George Cheeks explained at a press event last week.
“A year-plus ago, it was ‘figure your streaming out, build your [subscriber acquisition] at any cost, profits be damned,’” Cheeks said at a panel moderated by Deadline. “That was sort of the mandate. And then all of a sudden it became the opposite. Now it’s: ‘how fast can you get to profitability?’ And if you are profitable already, how do you enhance that profitability? It’s forcing all of us take a step back and really rationalize our contents spends.”
