Renewals, Cancellations, and Delays: 'The Rookie,' Elon Musk, 'Deadpool 3'

By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 10, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 10, 2023 |

This post could best be characterized as a trade-news round-up, but “trade news round-up” doesn’t get the clicks like “Elon Musk,” as in, “What’s Elon Musk doing in a renewals and cancellations piece?” Elon Musk falls under “Orders,” and his name is mentioned because everyone’s favorite subversive studio, A24, has won the right to make an Elon Musk movie, and get this: Darren Aronofsky will direct. I hear your groans!

What’s worse is that it’s based on Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography, which wasn’t flattering to the typical person. However, Elon Musk seemed to be proud of all the crazy shit Isaacson wrote about him. Then again, Aronofsky is the guy behind Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, The Whale, and Mother!, which means two things: The Elon Musk movie will be dark, and Elon Musk will not understand it. Mixed bag?

Elsewhere, now that the SAG-AFTRA strike is over, the release schedule is being shifted around again to account for delays. Disney made a rash of announcements last night. Deadpool 3 is moving from May to July, so at least it stays in the summer. Captain America: Brave New World was going to be released in that July slot next year, but now it will be released in February 2025. Thunderbolts moved from December 2024 to July 2025, and Blade is moving its February 2025 date to a November 2025 release. Delaying the Marvel release schedule is not necessarily a bad thing — I believe it makes Deadpool 3 the only Marvel release in 2024.

There’s only one cancellation today: ABC finally decided to pull the plug on The Rookie: Feds, which had been in limbo for months. I have no idea why they waited so long just to kill it, but they did the same thing to the Topher Grace sitcom Home Economics, which was a real bummer. ABC is also not moving ahead with its The Good Doctor spin-off, The Good Lawyer, which would have starred Felicity Huffman.

Here’s some modest good news about the broadcast network season, however: Night Court is going back into production next week, so it should be the first series back in the new year. Abbott Elementary, meanwhile, will go into production the week after Thanksgiving, so we may see new episodes of that series as soon as late January/early February.

There’s one more order worth noting: Starz has been all over the place lately, canceling essentially their entire slate of originals outside of the Power Book franchise (Heels, Run The World, and Blindspotting were canned and removed from the streamer last month). It was beginning to feel like maybe Starz was giving up. Not so: They’re just pivoting toward sex and violence. There’s an Outlander spin-off in the works, a series called Hunting Wives (“obsession, seduction, and murder”), and now they have greenlit a Spartacus sequel. Spartacus: House of Ashur brings back creator Steven DeKnight and actor Nick Tarabay, who played Ashur in the original series. I didn’t love Spartacus, but I did love the way it looked. That show was stylish AF.