Disney Plus has canceled The Right Stuff, bringing an end to the space race
There comes a day in the life of every streaming service when it must cast off the comfort and ease of childhood and kill its first original series, preferably up close and personal, so it can learn the value of life by watching the light slowly fade from the eyes of a streaming series that didn’t do a good job driving subscriber numbers. This weekend, Disney+ finally joined the other grown-up streaming services when it canceled one-season space race series The Right Stuff, putting all of its other streaming originals on notice—because if it can happen to The Right Stuff, a series that failed to make any sort of cultural impact, surely it could happen to anyone.
The Right Stuff (based on the Tom Wolfe book of the same name) was originally developed for National Geographic before becoming part of the Disney+ slate, but in a somewhat interesting twist given the current streaming landscape, it was actually created by Warner Bros. Television (a.k.a. HBO Max’s friends). Deadline—which originally reported this news—says that WarnerMedia is going to try and shop this series around to a different outlet, at least partially because it just got approved to get nearly $14 million to move production from Florida to California for a second season. In other words, Warner will save money making this TV show, but it has to actually spend money making the TV show to get that money, and we now have conclusive evidence that one major streaming platform does not want this TV show. It’s like buying $50 of laundry detergent at Target just so you can get a $15 gift card, except Disney+ already told you that it has plenty of laundry detergent already.
Deadline says there were some behind-the-scenes attempts to try and reimagine The Right Stuff (which has been a “modest performer” for the platform) for a potential second season, including one which would’ve time-jumped ahead by a few decades from the beginning of the U.S. space program in the ‘50s to new NASA missions in the ‘80s about different space-people.