Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter has made a few fiery exits over the past decade. He preemptively went medieval and pulled the plug on The Bastard Executioner after one season, and a handful of years later, he left the SoA spin off Mayans M.C., which he co-created with Elgin James, after admittedly “ruffling a few mouse ears” of incoming Disney overlords. After the initial news of his firing, he described himself as being “an abrasive dick.”
Sutter then regrouped before announcing in late 2022 that he had created and written The Abandons, an epic Western Netflix series for which he would be showrunner. The series purported to be matriarch heavy (as portrayed by Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey) in true Sutter fashion and included Sons of Anarchy and Mayans M.C. actors Ryan Hurst, Michael Ornstein, and Clayton Cardenas within an expansive cast. By all indications, Sutter has been cranking hard on the series and was frequently Instagramming from the set. Yesterday, he even posted a stunning view of “1851” “Oregon Territory” from the show, and suddenly, he’s now reportedly left The Abandons.
Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva reports that filming is nearly finished, but budget cuts and a trimmed episode count caused friction on a storytelling note, and those classic “creative differences” were ultimately to blame:
The departure is believed to stem from creative differences over the direction of the big-scale production as it is wrapping filming and headed into post. I hear an alarm went off at Netflix when the initial cut of the dense first episode, which sets the scene and introduces the large group of main characters, came in at 1 hour and 40 minutes. Cutting that down to an hour proved impossible, so a decision was made for the episode, written by Sutter and directed by Bathurst, to be split into two. That required creating a cliffhanger in the middle of the episode with additional scenes on both ends to wrap the premiere and kick off Episode 2.
Well, damn. Although Deadline reveals that “executive producer/director Otto Bathurst and co-exec producer Rob Askins will oversee the rest of filming — including reshoots,” this will still arrive as a gut punch to fans of the Sutterink banner. Kurt had even previously hinted that he had plans for Billy The Kid to arrive in a future season, but there’s no predicting whether The Abandons will continue after this initial season is released.
From the show’s plot synopsis:
“As a group of diverse, outlier families pursue their Manifest Destiny in 1850s Oregon, a corrupt force of wealth and power, coveting their land, tries to force them out. These abandoned souls, the kind of lost souls living on the fringe of society, unite their tribes to form a family and fight back. In this bloody process, ‘justice’ is stretched beyond the boundaries of the law. The Abandons will explore that fine line between survival and law, the consequences of violence, and the corrosive power of secrets, as this family fights to keep their land.”
The Abandons will presumably debut in 2025 without Kurt Sutter.
(Via Deadline)
