Netflix has cancelled Bad Crimes, a new adult animated series that was being produced by The Office (US) writer Greg Daniels and King of the Hill co-creator Mike Judge.
As reported by Variety (opens in new tab), the show was first commissioned in January this year with Lauren Lapkus (Orange is the New Black) and Nicole Byers (Nailed it!) set to voice the lead characters. It was created by Nicole Silverberg, known for Full Frontal with Samatha Bee, however, will now not see the light of day at the streaming platform.
The decision to not progress Bad Crimes is attributed to the exit of Netflix's head of adult animation Mike Moon in July, before being replaced by Billy Wee. The latter previously served as the senior vice president of comedy and animation at HBO Max. It's stated that the cancellation was strictly a creative choice, although it was noted that production on the project was about halfway through.
T3 has reached out to Netflix for comment.
Bad Crimes was set to be a dark comedy following two FBI agents, Kara (Byer) and Jennie (Lapkus), who travel across the US to solve grisly crimes alongside juggling their friendship, career ambitions and as many men as possible. It will now be offered to other platforms.
Numerous Netflix shows have been cancelled this year, and this isn't even the first one to be scrapped after the project had already begun. Grendel, a new comicbook adaption, was cancelled midway through filming after being commissioned for eight episodes. Just before that, Netflix confirmed that Resident Evil wouldn't return a month after the first season debuted.
A reason for these cancellations has reportedly been spurred on by Netflix's loss of more than 200,000 subscribers earlier this year. That said, the company added a further 2.4 million subscribers over the past three months, thanks to the likes of Stranger Things and Dahmer, so the true reasoning is very much up for debate.
What we do know is that Netflix is introducing its cheaper ad-based tier in early November with a global roll-out set to place over the following weeks. Whether that will help its subscriber base grow or potentially even decline is yet to be seen.
