After the difficulties in obtaining economic profitability from its content platforms, Disney preferred to curb its volume of releases so as not to hastily burn projects with high prices, that is, series derived from the Marvel and Star Wars universes. This does not mean that, when looking at the future of the Disney service, the first titles that come to mind are precisely from these franchises: Skeleton Crew and Ahsoka from the galaxy far, far away and Secret Invasion should arrive in the next twelve months. Ironheart, Agatha: Coven of chaos and the reboot of Daredevil with Charlie Cox again in the skin of the masked man. But what about the other original series on the platform? Whether original or based on theoretically known intellectual property, they are being canceled one after the other like The Search, which was set in the same universe as the Nicolas Cage movies.
The Search: Beyond History aired its first season between December and February. In it, Lisette Olivera was Jess, the daughter of immigrants, who embarked on an adventure to save a treasure linked to her family. It had the notoriety of the brand of The Search, which had earned almost 800 million dollars at the box office with the films released in 2004 and 2007, and in it Justin Bartha, one of the secondary characters in the film saga, repeated and introduced himself to Catherine Zeta Jones as the villain on duty. But, after broadcasting the ten episodes with unfavorable reviews that lamented its simplicity, the platform reported this weekend that it would not continue with it.
In this way, The Search joins the depressing club formed by We are the best: a new era, which effectively recovered the optimism of the nineties films but had to settle for two seasons; Big Shot, which was endorsed by creator David E. Kelley (Big little lies) and a television star like John Stamos (Full House); the children’s and youth series The Mysterious Benedict Society, which evoked a Roald-Dahlian universe with its own personality and stimuli, had to settle for the same number of seasons; and Diary of a future president, which recounted the childhood of a fictitious president of the United States of Cuban origins, which also had only two seasons like these aforementioned series.
In worse conditions, the remake of Partners and hounds with Josh Peck as the detective who solves cases with the help of a dog, which had a season, was cancelled; and Willow, which marked the return of Warwick Davies as the eighties magician, also counts as cancelled. Those involved argue that technically they could return later but, at the moment, they do not plan to produce more episodes. It was useless that, in addition to Warwick Davies, Jonathan Kasdan or Ron Howard were linked to the revival after concocting the project during the filming of Solo: A Star Wars Story.
These cancellations confirm the existence of a problem in Mickey Mouse’s development gear: those series designed to have continuity without depending on the company’s main franchises, and therefore a priori cheaper, do not obtain the expected weight among subscribers from the platform. And, with the release of both Star Wars and Marvel seasons being slowed both to save money and not to erode brands (remember that, despite doing well at the box office, superheroes are underperforming at the box office). movie theaters), this is a significant challenge for the company.
Those that do survive the bleeding of cancellations are High School Musical: The Musical: The series, which has aired three seasons and is renewed for a fourth despite the emancipation of Olivia Rodrigo, and What a Claus family! by Tim Allen, which after being released before the Christmas holidays, is renewed to return in the same period of 2023.
It should be remembered that, while series like How I Met Your Father, Fleishman Is in Trouble, Alaska Daily, The Simpsons or Tiny Delicate Things premiere exclusively in Spain through Disney, these are not originals of the streaming service. Actually they are developed by other channels and platforms owned by Disney such as Hulu (Only murders in the building, How I Met Your Father), FX (Fleishman is in trouble, The bear), ABC (Grey’s Anatomy, Alaska Daily) or FOX (The Great North, The Simpsons) and some of them are not available on Disney in the United States.
