ABC wasted little time cancelling Of Kings and Prophets, swinging the axe after two low-rated episodes.
Exec producers Reza Aslan and Mahyad Tousi took to Facebook to air their frustration at the biblical drama’s early demise, while expressing ‘confidence’ that the show will find a new home:
After two episodes, ABC Network has cancelled ‘Of Kings and Prophet’. It takes years of hard work, hundreds of people, and millions of dollars to make a show such as ours. Sadly it only takes two weeks to be pulled off the air.
It’s incredibly difficult to build a new TV show, especially one of this scale. As luck would have it, our show aired on major voting days, in what has become the most captivating American presidential primaries in history.
Most of those who saw the show enjoyed it. In our two outings, we were able to reach a combined total of 5.7M viewers, competitive numbers for cable, but sadly not sufficient to survive Network TV.
For reasons outside of our control, we were delayed and forced off our original time slot on Sundays. Nonetheless, we made a show we are all immensely proud of.
We are grateful to everyone that took a risk on this project. But mostly we are grateful to the amazing team that came together to bring this show to life — the Network, ABC Studio execs, our outstanding cast, our writers, crew, and everyone in South Africa. We all dreamed of a better outcome together.
We feel confident that ABC Studios will find a new home for our show so that the millions of you who have tuned in to see it will get an opportunity to see the rest of this tale, and that millions more will have the opportunity to see it.
Onwards.
Stay tuned for updates in the very unlikely event that Of Kings and Prophets is resurrected elsewhere…
Alice Johnson says
This is such nonsense! They have millions who tune in yet they cancel it. What about those of us who enjoyed the show? They can’t all be blockbusters or the #1 show. I’m so sick of this happening.
To begin with, it should be aired on Sunday evening. Two shows is not enough to build an audience. How many of those “out of the gate” blockbuster hits end up petering out & cancelled? A show like this is going to have a steady audience!
This is why I normally don’t watch a new show until it’s picked up! So yes, I know it screws up the numbers but I’m sick of the networks not caring about the audience.
Jared says
Amen to that. Couldn’t agree more!
Becky McElfresh says
UNBELIEVABLE!!! THIS show has been AWESOME!!! I can’t believe that you all would cancel it after ONLY 2 shows!!! It’s UNFAIR that you get someone hooked and then PULL IT OUT!!! I get SO sick of the ‘rating’ games you all play!!! I don’t know WHO it is that does these ratings….but they are WRONG! There have been TOO many shows that this is happening to and I for one am REALLY getting SICK OF IT!!! I DO hope that someone else picks this up…I’d subscribe to them even if it was JUST for this program!! I am really unhappy about this!!!