Girlboss has become the latest cancellation for Netflix, earning the boot after only one season. The streaming service has kept its promise to start giving more series the axe over the past few weeks, shedding The Get Down and Sense8 and showing that CEO Reed Hastings meant it when he said the company’s hit ratio was too high. Baz Luhrmann’s series was technically canceled before Hastings made his statement, but it is still the beginning of this current trend that is a strange new frontier for Netflix up to this point.
Girlboss premiered on the service back in April, with the support of Charlize Theron’s production company and Pitch Perfect’s Kay Cannon writing and executive producing the series according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series was loosely based on Sophia Amoruso’s book of the same name, following the founding of her company Nasty Gal and her life at the time. Britt Robertson starred as the fictional Sophia Marlowe, described as a “misfit” who “discovers a passion for fashion” that parallels Amoruso’s decision to sell vintage clothing on eBay at age 23 under the Nasty Gal name. Amoruso shared the news on Instagram according to The Hollywood Reporter:
“So that Netflix series about my life got canceled,” Amoruso wrote. “While I’m proud of the work we did, I’m looking forward to controlling my narrative from here on out. It was a good show, and I was privileged to work with incredible talent, but living my life as a caricature was hard even if only for two months.”
The reaction to this cancellation remains to be seen. It was not a critically praised show for the streaming platform, but it carried a strong base of fans and addressed a more diverse topic. This is similar to The Get Down and Sense8, falling in line with Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarando’s comments about “big, expensive shows for a tiny audience” being difficult to maintain.
(Via Mashable / Deadline / The Hollywood Reporter)
