On Wednesday Michael Offutt blogged about how most of the Game of Thrones prequel series in development had been canceled. And as Al Sirois would say, mass not giving a shit ensued. At least from most people.
The reason for this brings me back to something I tweeted when someone said that everyone thought GOT was high art. I argued that it wasn't "high art;" it was a soap opera only with swords and dragons and stuff like that. (And more nudity and incest than network soaps.) Most people watched it for the same reason people watch soap operas: to see who's going to hook up and who's going to get killed. And now that people know, they don't really give a shit anymore.
This isn't anything new. There's a long history in TV of where once you give the audience what it thinks it wants, they quit on the show. Like I Dream of Jeannie or Lois and Clark where once they had the main characters get married, the show soon lost most of its audience. Or Twin Peaks, once everyone found out who killed Laura Palmer, not that many people tuned in anymore. How many people still give a crap about Lost now that the "mystery" was solved?
In a way a lot of shows and their viewers are locked in a bad relationship. The show plays hard-to-get with some mystery, feeding the viewers just enough to keep them tuning in. But once the show stops playing hard-to-get, a lot of the viewers ghost it. Then showrunners and network execs cry because they thought viewers really loved their show when really they just wanted to know the solution to the mystery.
But there are still some who hang around. I mean Better Call Saul doesn't have the same viewership or sizzle as Breaking Bad, but apparently it's enough to hang around for a while. If they manage to get a GOT show together that will probably be the same: the die-hards will watch but the casual viewers won't. For that reason HBO probably balked because of how much those shows would cost.
It makes me wonder what will happen to Star Wars now that "The Skywalker Saga" is over. The latest trilogy performed well at the box office but in part because it could trade off the nostalgia with familiar faces. What happens if they try more movies set in the Old Republic or long after "The Skywalker Saga" where they can no longer play the nostalgia card?
Food for thought on All Saint's Day.
1 comment:
Yeah, that's a very valid point. I'd say it was the same in X-Files when Mulder and Scully ended up together.
And about Star Wars I'm not really enjoying the new movies, I don't think I'll see any old republic or stuff like that
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