Goodbye Jupiter’s Legacy, how we hardly knew ye. After just eight episodes, Netflix have been left with egg all over their face due to canceling the first project to come out of the streaming service’s acquisition of Mark Millar’s Millarworld, which set the company back over $30 million in the summer of 2017.
The principal cast have all been released from their contracts and the entire operation has now been hastily reworked into an anthology format based on Millar’s comic book titles, which you can guarantee wasn’t anywhere close to the original plan. The execs would have no doubt imagined Jupiter’s Legacy running for years, with subsequent Millarworld shows and feature films popping up in the interim, but it’s back to the drawing board for Netflix.
While watching even a few minutes of the series, it becomes clear that it must have been very expensive to produce, and now The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit is intimating that the big budget superhero project has resulted in a massive loss for Netflix, as you can see below.
Also, per sources, Jupiter's Legacy cost around $200 MILLION, reshoots and everything included, so this is a sizeable loss. https://t.co/z2BkndkIaH
— Borys Kit (@Borys_Kit) June 2, 2021
The platform doesn’t tend to release budgetary figures for many episodic titles, but crunch the numbers and we’re talking about Jupiter’s Legacy working out to an average of $25 million per installment for budget, cast, crew, promotion and marketing expenses. That’s an eye-watering number, and while it did spend a decent amount of time at the higher end of the most-watched list, it’s clear that the viewing figures simply weren’t strong enough.
Jupiter’s Legacy scored mixed reviews across the board from both subscribers and critics, but we’ve seen plenty of terrible shows renewed over the years, so a lack of audience engagement must have been the deal breaker.
