On Thursday, DC Comics fans were shocked to learn that the DC Universe streaming service’s latest original show, Swamp Thing, had been canceled a week after its premiere. Without any official comments from either DC or anyone at the newly formed WarnerMedia parent company, however, people were left to speculate about the possible reasons. Many assumed that the show’s being cut had something to do with a tax rebate mishap in North Carolina, where Swamp Thing was being filmed, but that might not be the case.
Deadline spoke with Guy Gasser, the director of the North Carolina Film Office, who took issue with the initial tweets from writer and artist John Gholson, who first drew attention to the supposed tax woes faced by the Swamp Thing production. “Some outlets used an unverified source,” he insisted, “but if they even went straight to Twitter, where the report apparently first started, they would have found that the gentleman had nothing to back up his own claim.” (Gholson has since retracted his tweets about the matter.)
“We found out just like everybody else,” he said of the show’s surprise cancellation. “Yes, it was a disappointment. It comes with the business. We don’t necessarily get insights in advance… sometimes if a show is renewed sometimes we found out in advance of the studio announcement, but with cancellations we usually found out with everybody else.”
Meanwhile, a DC Universe official offered a response from the streamer regarding Swamp Thing‘s demise on their official message board. “The full 10 episode season of Swamp Thing will continue to air on DC Universe with new episodes released weekly. There are no current plans for a Season 2,” read the statement. “We appreciate there are questions as to ‘why,’ but unfortunately we are not in a position to answer at this time.”
The statement continued:
DC Universe continues to develop new shows, new seasons, new stories, more availability, and more platforms. We’ve got a lot of exciting plans for our other shows in the works, and look forward to sharing more in the coming months.
That’s all the information I have to share at this time. Now that you have the goods, we will be going back through the threads and removing the false rumors and speculation that this choice means DC Universe or any of our other original series were affected.
(Via Deadline and DC Universe)