Streaming shows get canceled all the time, and far too many of them don’t even exist beyond a single season, but The Spiderwick Chronicles found itself in a unique position when it was ditched by Disney Plus seven months after principal photography wrapped.
As part of its massive cost-cutting drive that’s claimed countless lives, the Mouse House decided that even though it had spent plenty of time and even more money on reinventing the literary adaptation that had previously been the subject of a successful enough movie that earned almost $200 million at the box office, leaving it out on the lurch.
That was almost two months ago, but salvation has finally been found after Roku stepped in to pick up the distribution rights for The Spiderwick Chronicles. In terms of subscribers and awareness it’s quite a substantial step down, but at least the creative team, crew, and cast finally know their hard work will be able to be seen somewhere eventually.
A curious development is that Roku recently embarked on a purge of its own, with dozens upon dozens of originals being given the boot, although the majority of them did hail from doomed streamer Quibi. Does that mean we shouldn’t expect The Spiderwick Chronicles to last beyond its maiden run of episodes? Time will tell, but at least it’s cleared one major hurdle by finding somewhere to air.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea origin story Nautilus hasn’t been quite so lucky, at least not yet anyway, but the precedent has been set that all is not lost.