Netflix rounds out its crappy April by killing two more animated shows
Boons And Curses and Dino Daycare were both still in development at the streamer
Netflix capped off a bad couple of weeks by killing off two more shows this Friday, pretty much, as far as we can tell, just for the road. Specifically, the streaming service has axed two animated series from its (apparently quite troubled) Original Animation department while they were still just in development, and before they’d even had a chance to air: Dino Daycare, executive produced by Chris Nee (Ada Twist, Scientist), and Boons And Curses, created by Jaydeep Hasrajani.
News of the cancellations was reported by THR, which notes that both series were apparently killed off after hitting a “creative impasse” with the streamer. (No word on what form said impasse might have taken; maybe Ted Sarandos has extremely strong takes on dinosaur daycare workers.) Dino Daycare was being developed under Nee (a long-time writer and producer in kids entertainment, who also worked on Doc McStuffins and a number of other elementary-aimed Netflix shows) by first-time showrunner Jeff King. The series was first announced back in 2020.
Boons And Curses, meanwhile, was first touted at the streamer as an example of its commitment to increasing the presence of both Asian-American stories and storytellers in its kids entertainment, a presence that is now, we can’t help but notice, diminished by at least one show. Announced last May, the series—helmed by Hasrajani, who worked on the 2016 Powerpuff Girls revival—centered on a young hero whose battle against an evil warlord is made significantly more complicated when a curse transforms him into butter. Back in the day, Hasrajani gave Netflix a statement about the show, reading, “Growing up, I used to think of the hyphen in ‘Indian-American’ as a separator between two parts of myself. With Boons And Curses I want to turn that hyphen from a wall into a bridge.”
The streamer’s treatment of Boons And Curses was greeted especially unhappily on social media this weekend, with numerous animators and other crew on the series suggesting that the cancellation came as a surprise, praising Hasrajani as both a boss and a creative lead on the project, and bemoaning the loss of a chance to get more positive representation of AAPI stories on the service. (A few people have grimly noted that AAPI Heritage Month literally starts tomorrow, making the timing extra-lousy.)
News of the cancellations come as Netflix continues to take it in the teeth after a disastrous earning call last week. The service also canceled its two-season Steve Carell comedy Space Force this week, and its Tudum fan site reportedly (and abruptly) laid off several writers yesterday.