Gotham Knights Fails to Find New Home After CW Cancellation — Read Showrunners’ Statement
Sorry to be the bearer of bat news, but despite considerable behind-the-scenes efforts, The CW‘s Gotham Knights is officially dead in the water.
“Since many of you have been asking about the possibility of Gotham Knights finding a new home, we wanted to let you know that, over the last few months, our producing partners at Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Discovery had been working extremely hard to get the show picked up or possibly even moved to a new network,” showrunners James Stoteraux and Chad Fiveash wrote Wednesday on social media. “There is a great deal of love and support for GK at the studio, and at The CW as well. Unfortunately, despite all their efforts, The CW wasn’t able to renew the show, and the studio wasn’t able to find a new home for it.”
The showrunners went on to assure fans that “it wasn’t for a lack of trying or a lack of enthusiasm. Even in a time of severe belt-tightening, the studio spent money and resources in the hope of continuing the show. And though they ultimately weren’t successful, their efforts deserve our gratitude.”
They continued: “We would all love nothing more than to keep telling this story. After all, this is a show based on looking for hope when hope seems lost. But as the showrunners, the two of us feel like we owe it to the fans to be realistic about the chances of the show continuing. At this point it’s virtually impossible. There’s a million mind-numbing production logistics working against us at this point, and resurrecting the show would be extremely cost prohibitive. Trust us, the executives truly do love the show, and hear your dedication to it, but they unfortunately can’t make the numbers work. Just speaking from our hearts, we can’t in good conscience let a community that we love and care about expend resources without being totally honest about the realities.” (Click here to read their full statement.)
News of Gotham Knights‘ cancellation broke on June 12, the same day that The CW opted to renew Superman & Lois and All American: Homecoming. Walker and All American had already received early renewals, while Walker: Independence and The Winchesters were both previously canceled.
Season-to-date, Gotham Knights is averaging 719,000 total viewers and a 0.1 demo rating (with Live 7 playback). Out of the 14 dramas that The CW has aired this TV season, it ranks No. 8 in total audience and is in a nine-way tie for third (or, last) in the demo.
The season — now series — finale of Gotham Knights airs Tuesday, June 27 at 9/8c. What are your hopes for the show’s untimely end? Drop ’em in a comment below.
Not even Max?
Where did this concept of “Max as savior” come from? The same Max that disappeared dozens of shows that WB owns is going to decide to absorb the cost of producing more of one of its cancelled shows…?
Because it was always one of the top performers ever since the show debuted back in March. It had strong numbers on the streamer, it was always around the top 10 at the very least. That is why some did think believe that it was possible to make it find a home there, as well that it was said that the same option was being explored in the case of Superman & Lois which is far more expensive to do. (Hence why it is so weird that they chose to renew the most expensive vs the least one due to Gotham Knights not relying so much on special effects) But in a way, you are right Matt. Max has not been the same since Zaslav took over and began to scrap it all in the name of his precious tax write-offs.
Everything in WBD has become deplorable since he took over.
Top performer on the WB is not top performer on MAX…max has systematically killed off their entire DC TV Universe and the DC plan with James gunn covers tv as well, it’s highly unlikely they’d want this horrible comic book idea for a tv show on the network…as a very old comic book geek, the trailer was just awful, killing off bruce wayne? Sure, that happens easily…the premise of the sho was pretty bad. Not all shows deserve to get rescued…
I said it was a top performer on the streamer aka Max (or before it was lazily and unoriginally rebranded in that way since it used to be HBO Max but according to Zaslav the HBO brand was like “pushing clients away”) which is what WB developed over 2019 to launch it then in 2020. I’m aware of what Max has been doing ever since Zaslav got his greedy fingers on it. Gunn’s plans so far are for me underwhelming since they all answer to the pursuit of Zaslav’s profitability and tbh “Waller” in itself sounds unnecessary but yet it’s still being done. Agree to disagree on the premise being “horrible”, if a video game can get away with doing it then it’s no wonder a TV show was able to land a pilot since WB/DC are that selfish in sharing around most of the Bat characters, especially their golden toy of Bruce (who isn’t exactly done any favours in the Flash film either but they sure don’t mind that) but at least they could explore new layers with a deep-dive cast of characters that hardly got the focus on. It quickly found it’s footing and it wasn’t anywhere close to being as boring as Naomi was. Not all shows deserve to be axed like how that’s all that Nexstar and WB like to do lately.
Series hasn’t hit max yet and won’t until the last new episode airs as it streams just like every other cw show on there site and app first
Superman & Lois has had it’s budget cut. The episode order has been reduced and the regular cast cut in number. One final season for it to go out in style.
It is super weird given how Nexstar is obsessed woth the bottom line (much like the idiot running WBD) but I guess prestige won out over money (especially given the budget and episode cuts for S&L). I’ve enjoyed GK way more than I thought I would but you can see how a critically lauded Superman show wins out over the not-Batman show.
Prestige an GK? Seriously? Lets not get too carried away…
It’s almost like they aren’t paying attention to the bloodbath of DC tv shows (and movies) on or scheduled to be on HBO MAX before the merger. DIscovery GUTTED the DC tv universe they had, of quality good shows without ludicrous premises that ignore their comic book origins 100%. I mean they haven’t said anything but I’m just assuming the best animated comic book tv show of all times has been cancelled (the REASON i subscribed to HBO max in the beginning was that all the DC shows were moving to Max)
Fair enough. Originally, Max was supposed to be where CW shows went to stream. I’ve been puzzled for quite some time as to why this changed. The only reason that I can think of is that a new faction sprung up in Warners who didn’t want to do anything that was any other faction’s idea and would happily destroy the CW rather than compromise on that. Sadly, that faction won the studio wars-at least, for now. I guess we’re all still hoping that sanity will return to Warners -or maybe, that something will spring up to fill the hole that the CW’s demise has created. I mean, there is a demand out there for something like the CW – I hope that something comes to fill it soon. This whole thing has been going on for over a year and just keeps getting worse for the fans. We could really use some good news at this point…
That has been the sad story of WB for years: Too many crooks in the kitchen, all trying to leave their mark. Now we got one crook, but doesnt really seem to go any better.
Sadly true.
(HBO) Max is owed by WB/Discovery, but they clearly don’t want it. Same goes for the other cancelled shows, excluding WI, which is CBS. Paramount is owned by CBS and they didn’t want it either.
Which in a way it’s funny how the showrunners have to somehow kiss the boots of these same execs by saying they “there is a great deal of love and support”, “it wasn’t for a lack of enthusiasm” blah blah when it’s obvious that Zaslav’s WBD doesn’t want it. If he had his way he would’ve found the way to scrap it for a tax-write off just like he did it to Batgirl.
Can’t wait for the day he gets his butt out of the company.
I enjoyed the first couple of episodes but then it went downhill like most all the teenybopper shows do. Sorry to the people that like those kind of shows but it’s just not my cup of tea.
My opinion is a bit different. I thought the show started out better than expected and then actually improved as the season progressed.
So I watched 5 episodes then stopped but last night did 5 more. The quality just goes down and down. The smarmy comments by all the kids are so poorly delivered I barely hear what theyre saying. “Robin”essentially mumbles all of her lines. Its awful. And nothing ever happens, its all of these reveals that go no where. The Harvey Dent story is particularly bad.
I’m shocked. I assumed networks would be killing themselves to get this prize of a show.
They maybe would have if it actually were a prize… and not a cheaply made church carnival toy with a limited shelf life like everyone else knew it was.
Glad I gave up after the second episode.
I knew it I actually expected it caz everytime I start to watch a show & like it CW cancels it it’s really ridiculous!!! I said it B4 & I’ll say it again I’m done with CW!!! Not even gonna watch it anymore!!!
although i enjoyed the series, it was expected … i still blame James Gunn for killing he entire DCTV universe because it didnt/doesnt fit into his visions.
Couldn’t agree more. There’s a lot more to this story then we’re being told. All this time we were told that the show’s future was up in the air. How could all these production logistic problems have sprung up so quickly-the show was only cancelled yesterday? Is this like the other shows that were cancelled because they were too cheap to pay the studio space? Or did this show suffer from the ultimate crime-it was not developed by the brilliant mind of David Zslav and his flunky James Gunn ( I used to like Gunn but ever since he started running down the work people did on DC stuff before him, he’s turned into an egotistical jerk). They basically decided to get rid of everything that they didn’t create (except the Pattinson Batman stuff because that made too much money to bury) to make sure that nobody else got the applause that only they deserve. They decided to bury everybody else’s work through indifference or actual effort so that everybody would forget about it and they would be regarded as the only brilliant minds to work on DC projects ever -which,of course, is what they deserve.
Zaslav and Gunn’s stuff may well be good. But the way they’ve treated other creators of DC stuff -and fans of that stuff -is beneath contempt. And are so they.
Whoops. Meant to say “and so are they.”. They always meant to cancel the show-they lied about it, they continue to lie about it and they’re making the show runners lie about it. It’s no accident that this is coming out now-they want to kill any revival effort before it can get going.
Disgusting.
This is some wild delusion.
You do realize that nobody thinks you’re the actual James Gunn, right?
What choice did Gunn have? The DCEU was a mess before he joined. I’m guessing you’re one of those annoying Sniderverse people who just won’t let go?
Err, Gotham Knights has nothing to do with the Snyderverse,the DCEU or the DCU movies. What I and other people are objecting to is Gunn and Zaslav’s lack of interest in/contempt for the other people who have worked to keep people interested in other DC projects while DC struggled with its films – the Gotham Knights people, the Arrowverse people, Bruce Timm (who together with Paul Dini is more responsible for Batman’s current popularity than anybody but who got his new series cancelled by Zaslav) etc. Thankfully,the Timm series found a home- hopefully, we haven’t seen the last of the Knights,the Arrowverse etc.
You’ve got the sets, why not make more episodes and put them on a streaming service where viewers can pay to see each episode?
Yeeesss I totally agree with you!!!
Very sad to hear that a show with such promise is being canceled by The CW.
No one seems to give shows a chance to catch their footing anymore. Let’s just make it and then cancel it, seems to be the norm. Guess I will not waste my time watching any new shows being launched by this network.
I was suprised and sorry it ended after one season. I thought it was pretty good!
Yep…soon all that will be left is more tiresome unscripted shows. Just how many Gorden Ramsey screamfests will viewers have to endure.
I totally agree they need to stop canceling all the good shows & putting on crap ones!!!
Sadly, it’s because unscripted shows are cheaper and the CW no longer cares about what it’s viewers want.
It’s to bad it was cancelled. Just took to long on the one story line. I think season two would have seen more watching. Good luck to all the cast and crew.
At least Superman and Lois is renewed, tho for only 10 episodes. Greed, as usual, rules. But at least with Superman and Lois we’re not left with only that stunning final scene of Superman and Luthor’s creation racing towards each other. In the comic, it did not go well, however.
As for Gotham Knights…one can only imagine what the next season would have brought with Turner being groomed for … what????
They need to renew Gotham knights
The new owners of the CW are only interested in profits…good ferengies that they are… and have absolutely no interest in scripted series. It’s the end of interesting shows beyond the lame stuff on the 3 majors. At least we get a wrap-up season for superman and lois.
I was hoping for a second season, love watching gk from Ireland 🇮🇪
Really hope somehow it finds a new home.
Show was good, until the last few episodes where CW continues to push there LGBTQ content to children, and the the straight sex scene w/ 15 year olds in bed felt a little like soft CP. This is that last chance I will give CW, good luck pushing social agenda rather than a producing proper television show everyone can enjoy.