According to Deadline, HBO has canceled animated series Animals, bringing its three-year run to an end. The series told short little vignettes about the wacky/dark inner lives of wacky/dark animals living in New York, like mice and turtles, all of whom were either voiced by creators Phil Matarese and Mike Luciano (who also wrote and directed every episode) or a celebrity guest. In the show’s third season, the voice cast included Edie Falco, David Harbour, Lucy Liu, Natasha Lyonne, Anthony Mackie, Tatiana Maslany, Tracy Morgan, and John Mulaney. The celebrity guests didn’t do much for Animals’ ratings, though, which consistently put it as one of the least-watched originals on the premium cable network. For example, the most recent finale only got 200,000 live/same day viewers, which isn’t much.
As Deadline explains, the show got its start as a simple comedy short created by Matarese and Luciano when they were working at an advertising production company and started riffing a conversation between a pair of pigeons they saw outside their office. That short became a series of shorts, which Mark and Jay Duplass helped them turn into a whole season, which was then bought by HBO at Sundance.