Vinyl Isn’t Coming Back After all
HBO has decided to cancel Vinyl after a single season even though it was renewed.
Well, that was a surprise.
Vinyl, HBO’s expensive new project, won’t be back for a second season according to Deadline. HBO paid an enormous sum of money for the Martin Scorsese and Mic Jagger series and renewed the series months ago for a second season. The first season was a bit of a mess, but there was still some hope that it could improve given time.
That, apparently, isn’t something that HBO has been keen on giving lately. Although Vinyl’s first season wasn’t the huge success that HBO wanted, they still wanted to move forward, albeit with a new showrunner. Terence Winter was switched out due to creative differences with HBO, but it looks like the new plan hasn’t worked out either.
Take a look inside what is now Vinyl’s final episode:
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This also isn’t the first time that HBO has canceled a series after renewing it; the same thing happened to The Brink, which starred Jack Black. HBO released a statement saying that “After careful consideration, we have decided not to proceed with a second season of Vinyl.” It’s something of a non-statement, but the reasons are clear enough to see.
It previously appeared that HBO was committed to making Vinyl work, but something went wrong along the way. This is the first major programming statement of Casey Bloys, who took over for Michael Lombardo. If Lombardo were still around it’s possible that Vinyl would have survived, but this also means that it won’t be a drain on the network.
That’s not to say that it couldn’t have been made into a hit, but we’ll never know at this point. This was likely not an easy decision to come to, though HBO has been rather aggressive in making cuts as of late. The Vinyl cancellation comes after the cancellations of both Looking and Togetherness, two shows that couldn’t hit their respective ratings marks.
Next: Watch the first trailer for Divorce.
With how much HBO promoted Vinyl as its next big thing, it’s going to be interesting to see what it replaces it with.