Belts are being tightened all across the small screen sphere, and that covers both streaming and the standard network model. There’s barely a high-profile outfit in the industry that hasn’t axed at least a handful of original shows recently, and we’ve now reached a point where not even Dwayne Johnson is safe.
After three seasons, NBC has brought the axe down on Young Rock, the autobiographical and highly self-indulgent sitcom created and executive produced by the A-list megastar, which traced his journey from wayward teenager to professional wrestling superstar. Johnson even popped up for sporadic cameos where he’d find himself in the midst of a presidential campaign among other things, but the real and fictional journey is now at an end.
If the highest-paid on-camera talent in the industry isn’t safe from TV’s rampant cancellation spree, then all bets are well and truly off. After all, there have been high-profile casualties everywhere you look; whether it’s Netflix ditching even more popular exclusives, Disney orchestrating a massive content purge across all of its subsidiary platforms, Max pulling the plug on a number of titles, or The CW undergoing an entire restructure, things are getting pretty dicey out there.
For Johnson, it marks a third major professional setback in fairly quick succession after DC League of Super-Pets and Black Adam both under-performed at the box office before being instantly cast out of canon by James Gunn and Peter Safran, so it’s beginning to look obvious why he reneged on his word and opted to throw his lot back in with Fast & Furious.
