In the streaming era, it’s hard to quantify exactly what constitutes a flop when key data like budgetary figures and viewership numbers are largely withheld, but it would be safe to say that Netflix’s Jupiter’s Legacy was a bomb.
It may have topped the Nielsen streaming ratings the first weekend it was available and become a fixture on the platform’s Top 10 most-watched list, but it wasn’t a good look for the first show to come out of the company’s $31 million acquisition of Millarworld to find itself getting binned after just eight episodes, with the entire concept being reworked into an anthology following only one season of television.
A new report has now diveed into what exactly happened behind the scenes, and it sounds as though Jupiter’s Legacy went massively over budget and well behind schedule. Steven DeKnight, who developed the project, is said to have asked Netflix for funds upwards of $12 million per installment, but the boardroom would only go as high as $9 million. Creative differences ultimately led to him departing halfway through production to be replaced by Sang Kyu Kim, who was then told to heavily alter the episodes that were already in the can.
Louis Leterrier, meanwhile, a proven big budget and effects-driven filmmaker behind The Incredible Hulk and Now You See Me who also worked on Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and Lupin for Netflix, was drafted in during the incredibly lengthy post-production process, and that’s where the budget snowballed to as high as $200 million, which were the sort of numbers that saw DeKnight leave in the first place after the bean counters refused to acquiesce to his demands.
All told, it sounds like a fairly nightmarish experience from crew to executive level, and at the end of the day, it saw Jupiter’s Legacy canned less than a month after premiering.
