Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: marco polo, netflix, tv

Netflix Cancels Marco Polo Historical Drama After 2 Seasons

While a bit of a disappointment, the news should surprise exactly no one that Netflix has scuttled their historical drama series Marco Polo after just two seasons. Opening in 2014, it was the first Netflix series developed in the US for both domestic and international distribution.

Created by John Fusco, the series is a grand-scale period piece covering a not-particularly historical version (but still infinitely better than Reign) of Marco Polo's early years in the court of Kubla Khan. As with most period and fantasy setting series, they need a atypically large audience to support it's budget requirements. While it had moderate first season viewship numbers, it was generally panned by reviewers. The all but ignored the second season's premiere, with Netflix brought it out in the white noise of the week and a half prior to San Diego Comic Con, and never gave it much cross-promotion from within the service, so its numbers declined heavily.

Since the casts contracts were all set to expire after the second season, there was little surprise by either case or crew that the series had been shown the door.

"We want to thank and are grateful to our partners on Marco Polo from the actors, whose performances were enthralling and top-notch; to the committed producers, including John Fusco, Dan Minahan, Patrick Macmanus, and their crew, who poured their hearts into the series; and of course Harvey, David and our friends at TWC, who were great collaborators from start to finish," said Cindy Holland, Netflix VP of Original Content.

In an interview with THR, they reported previously:

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos told THR in a roundtable discussion with other executives that Marco Polo had done "what it was supposed to do." "Marco Polo is one of those shows for us [where viewership doesn't matter to international audiences]," he said. "It's hugely popular all throughout Asia and Europe, and there's a lot of focus on if your neighbors might be watching it. And it's really irrelevant because it's doing what it's supposed to do."

Be that as it may, it was reported that between the first two seasons, Polo was responsible for a $200 million dollar loss to Netflix, which may have pushed the boundary of what "viewership doesn't matter" really means.

They had hoped for it to be their answer to HBO's Game of Thrones, but they failed to take into account that fans of a novel series are more apt to endure long between-season breaks or uneven scripting to get to an upcoming favorite scene. Without that to help engage an unsure audience and without a network really behind the production, it isn't a surprise, but it's still a disappointment. Decent historical dramas are still too few and far between.

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