The Cancellation of 'Boots' Explains Hollywood Right Now

Netflix released its viewership rankings for the final six months of 2025, and among scripted series, the highest-ranking canceled show was Boots, the excellent Miles Heizer coming-of-age dramedy about a closeted gay Marine. It landed at No. 23 — outperforming the quickly renewed second season of Kristen Bell’s Nobody Wants This (#24), the fourth season of The Witcher (#29), and the third season of Keri Russell’s The Diplomat (#41), all of which were promptly brought back.

It’s also hard to imagine Boots was particularly expensive. It had no major stars and no costly set pieces. The obvious difference between Boots and those renewed series is that the others weren’t publicly lambasted by the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, as “woke garbage.”

Elsewhere, Bari Weiss’s takeover of CBS News is well documented — and by most accounts, disastrous. CBS News has hemorrhaged credibility, morale inside the division has cratered, talk of mutiny has circulated, and ratings continue to slide. And yet, as The New Yorker reported this week, Weiss’s job appears secure.

“This is often compared to the Chris Licht debacle at CNN, but the contrast matters more than the similarity. Licht was fired. Weiss, sources say, is not going anywhere. That difference explains what is actually happening. Licht was sincere, and when his project failed, David Zaslav fired him because CNN still needed to function as a news organization. The institution mattered. CBS News does not appear to matter to Skydance in the same way. What matters is regulatory goodwill. Weiss appears willing to serve that purpose.”

In other words, creative decisions at both Paramount and Netflix are no longer being driven solely by ratings, reviews, or awards. They are being shaped by “regulatory goodwill.” When the new administration took over last year, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav spoke openly about how conditions would become more hospitable to mergers and acquisitions. I doubt even Zaslav anticipated just how aggressively studios would need to placate the administration to secure approval.

That’s what the cancellation of Boots was about. It’s what the hollowing-out of CBS News is about. It’s also why we lost Stephen Colbert. And it helps explain why David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance is so aggressively pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery and its assets. Even post-merger, Paramount Skydance remains competitively weak. Paramount’s most reliable hits come from Taylor Sheridan, who is leaving for NBCUniversal in 2028. CBS is coasting on the fumes of Survivor and procedurals aimed at aging audiences. And the film division? This is the 2026 slate:

Primate
Scream 7
Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D)
Scary Movie 6
Jackass 5
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie
The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender
Street Fighter
Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol
Focker In-Law
The Angry Birds Movie 3

That is bleak. A single Avatar sequel will almost certainly outgross Paramount’s entire slate. Which is why Ellison is so desperate to land Warner Bros. Discovery — especially after tanking the value of CBS News in the process. If he fails — and I hope he does — what remains are Taylor Sheridan’s leftovers, Star Trek spinoffs, and the aging bones of Jeff Probst and Johnny Knoxville.

Ideally, no one would acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. But barring that, I want this deal resolved quickly, followed by a long moratorium on mergers and acquisitions, so studios can get back to making creative decisions for creative — or at least business — reasons. Because when decisions are made in service of regulatory goodwill, the biggest loser is the viewer: subscribers paying for fewer risks, fewer surprises, and fewer reasons to care.