Disney+ Won't Release The Spiderwick Chronicles TV Show That's Already Completed Filming
The spend-spend-spend era of the streaming wars is over, and we've now landed squarely in the cut-cut-cut era. From Warner Bros. Discovery scrapping "Batgirl" after filming was already completed to Disney removing "Willow" from Disney+ less than six months after its release, entertainment giants are scrambling to trim costs and write down assets anywhere they can.
The latest casualty of this trend is "The Spiderwick Chronicles," an eight-episode TV adaptation of the fantasy novel series by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, which was previously adapted into a 2008 movie starring Freddie Highmore (seen above). The TV series stars "It" and "Shazam!" breakout Jack Dylan Grazer as a brownie called Thimbletack, alongside Lyon Daniels, Noah Cottrell, Joy Bryant, and Mychala Lee. Christian Slater plays the villain, an ogre called Mulgarath, and Aron Eli Coleite ("Locke and Key") is the showrunner. The series began filming in September 2022 and wrapped in early 2023, so it's probably completed a decent chunk of post-production as well. It was produced with a plan to release on Disney+, but is now homeless.
The good news is that there's still a chance we'll get to see this take on "The Spiderwick Chronicles." It was produced by Paramount Television Studios alongside the Disney-owned 20th Television, and Paramount is now shopping it around to try and find a new buyer. Paramount has its own streaming service, Paramount+, so the show could potentially end up there. On the other hand, Paramount has been doing its own share of cost-cutting over the past year, so it's possible that the series could end up being scrapped for the sake of a tax write-off. Per Deadline, Disney+ decided not to proceed with the show in part because of a renewed focus on Disney-owned IP.
The cost of streaming crisis
Disney making the decision to dump fresh content in the middle of Hollywood's historic dual strike is pretty, well, striking. Given the empty production pipeline, scrapping a show that was almost ready to go is no small decision. It's the latest step in Disney's current strategy of ruthlessly removing original content on Disney+ — a strategy that allowed the company to take a $1.5 billion tax write-down in the last quarter. This week also saw Disney+ original Doogie Kamealoha, M.D." (a reboot of "Doogie Hower, M.D.") canceled after two seasons.
These decisions are part of a wider reckoning in the streaming landscape. Following the booming success of Netflix and the diminishing returns of traditional broadcast TV and cable, major studios (and also Apple, for some reason) began a fierce race to launch their own streaming services and put together expensive slates of original content to entice subscribers. It worked, to a certain extent; Netflix's market share has gone from 49.1 percent in 2018 to an estimated 26.3 percent by the end of 2023 (per Reuters), and Disney+ has amassed 157.8 million subscribers since its launch in 2019.
Now a solid base of subscribers are signed up, however, these new streaming services are facing some problems. The first is that the market has been spread too thin; most people are okay signing up for two or three streaming services, but when every company insists on having its own platform it's simply too expensive to subscribe to them all, especially in a cost of living crisis. The second is that it's hard to justify producing expensive prestige originals exclusive to streaming when many subscribers will ignore them in favor of simply rewatching "The Office" or "Suits."
For the sake of the fans, at least, let's hope "The Spiderwick Chronicles" is able to find a new home in these difficult times.