We've seen the last of The Last Tycoon. The Matt Bomer and Lily Collins period drama is the latest show to be canceled by Amazon Studios, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Set in 1930s Hollywood and based on an unfinished F. Scott Fitzgerald novel which was published posthumously in 1941, the nine-episode series premiered on the retailer's streaming network on July 28.
It's the second Fitzgerald-inspired show to get the axe this week. Amazon Studios also just said goodbye to Christina Ricci's Z: The Beginning of Everything — which chronicled the life of the Great Gatsby author's wife Zelda — after a single season.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
It's not just Fitzgerald who has fallen out of favor with the streaming site. Good Girls Revolt and Mad Dogs were canceled last year as Amazon Studios shifts its focus to more buzz-worthy shows with "global appeal," Variety reports.
Amazon Studios chief Roy Price told the entertainment trade publication that he was seeking out "big shows that can make the biggest difference around the world" — shows that might rival the success of HBO's Game of Thrones.
“I do think Game of Thrones is to TV as Jaws and Star Wars was to the movies of the 1970s,” Price told Variety. “It’ll inspire a lot of people. Everybody wants a big hit and certainly that’s the show of the moment in terms of being a model for a hit.”
Price named The Tick and The Man in the High Castle as current programming successes. He's also commissioned five new projects, including a comic book adaptation produced by Seth Rogen, a Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen comedy, and Tong Wars, a period crime drama that documents Chinese immigration into the U.S.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel by Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino; a Jack Ryan adaptation starring John Krasinski; a Matthew Weiner series about the Romanoffs; and a drama with Julianne Moore and Robert De Niro are also in the pipeline for 2018 — at least for now. The sudden reversal on Z: The Beginning of Everything — which had received an order for a second season — proves that nothing's set in stone. If you paid attention to big studio politics plots in The Last Tycoon (R.I.P.), you know this: Hollywood is fickle, old sport.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT