Posted in: Netflix, TV | Tagged: bone, jeff smith

Bone: New Details on Netflix's Canceled Jeff Smith Comics Series Adapt

Nearly three years after Netflix canceled the project, new details on the animated series adaptation of Jeff Smith's Bone have emerged.

Despite how things look for the streaming service these days, April 19, 2022, was a brutal day for Netflix in terms of Wall Street. By the close of the day, the streaming giant's stock was down 35% (its biggest one-day selloff since 2004), losing $54 billion in market value in the process. The hit came after co-CEO Reed Hastings reported that Netflix had lost something like 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of 2022 and an expected 2 million drop in the then-current quarter. That led the streamer to unleash a number of initiatives – including an ad-supported second subscriber tier and cracking down on password sharing. It also meant that Netflix would be pulling back on the programming side, too – with the animated adaptation of Jeff Smith's graphic novel series Bone getting canceled. Up until now, not much was known about the project – one that we closely followed and were excited to see come to life – but that changed over the holidays.

Lost Media Busters spoke with Nick Cross, a co-executive producer on the project, to learn more about where things were before Netflix pulled the plug. In terms of where things were production-wise, Cross noted that they "really only got into the writing and design phase" and that "Overall, we were in preproduction for a little over a year." At that point, the team consisted of Cross, their co-executive producer, a director, a line producer, and two writers – with 18 episodes over two seasons planned. Cross also shared that the team was notified that Netflix had killed the project over a Zoom call with an executive from the streaming service while they were all still working from home.

And here's a look at another find that Lost Media Busters shared earlier this month: a rough storyboard from early in the development and production stage:

In response to not just the Netflix decision but his graphic novel's past history of attempts by Nickelodeon and Warner Bros. to bring the beloved work to the big screen, Smith posted a comic shortly after the news broke in April 2022 that included a nod to the late, great Charles Schultz. In the piece, Fone Bone (in full-on Charlie Brown mode) keeps trying to kick the "football" offered by studios promising to bring the graphic novel to the screen. And, of course, each time the studio (represented by Phoney) pulled the football away. And if there was any confusion about how Smith is feeling about it all, the comic ends with Fone saying, "Never again."

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