The lawless world of streaming has thrown up plenty of curious conundrums over the years, but there aren’t many head-scratchers out there than the entirety of Most Dangerous Game, from its origins and existence to its ultimate exile from the airwaves.
Richard Connell’s original short story is one of the most-adapted works of fiction there’s ever been – spawning dozens of movies, TV shows, comic books, video games, and any other form of media you can think of – but none of them turned out to be quite as fascinating as the most recent.
Starring Liam Hemsworth and Christoph Waltz, Most Dangerous Game originated as a Quibi original, but that experiment ended in ignominious failure when the short-form streamer went bust in near-record time. Migrating over to Prime Video, Amazon’s on-demand platform recut the entire thing into a feature film, which ended up becoming an unexpected hit.
However, Roku waded headlong into the breach and commissioned a second season, with The Umbrella Academy‘s David Castañeda headlining Most Dangerous Game: New York, which premiered this past March and ran for 12 episodes. Just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any more convoluted, though, the show is now gone entirely.
As part of the latest cost-cutting drive that’s bad news for original content everywhere, Roku has removed Most Dangerous Game from its library completely, rendering the renewal ultimately pointless. At the end of the day, we’re talking about an adaptation that started as a short-form series, found success as a movie, migrated back to episodic territory for a standard-format second run, and has now been wiped from existence by the very company that renewed it, which is enough to make your head spin.