Axes continue to fall at Disney this week—and now the company is getting to shows with actual axes in them. Last week, Disney revealed in an earnings call that it would begin to remove programming from some of its streaming services as a cost-cutting measure, and the first impacted shows have been revealed. Unfortunately, the list includes Willow, the excellent but criminally under-watched sequel show which debuted just a few months ago.
Vulture broke the news of the departures which are apparently happening next week on May 26. The site also posted this list of some of the shows that are being removed:
• Be Our Chef
• Best In Dough
• Best In Snow
• Big Shot
• Disney Fairy Tale Weddings
• Dollface
• Earth To Ned
• Everything’s Trash
• Foodtastic
• Howard
• It’s a Dog’s Life With Bill Farmer
• Little Demon
• Love In The Time Of Corona
• Maggie
• Magic Camp
• The Making Of Willow
• The Mysterious Benedict Society
• The One And Only Ivan
• Pistol
• The Premise
• The Quest
• Stuntman
• Timmy Failure
• Willow
• Wolfgang
• The World According To Jeff Goldblum
• Y: The Last Man
While the big takeaways for io9 readers are shows like Willow and Y: the Last Man, that’s a huge list of content. Yes, most are shows that only lasted a season or two, but they’re also shows that could potentially find new fans just by living on a service. Now, they’ll be impossible to find.
A Disney spokesperson confirmed the news and the May 26 date to io9 and pointed toward comments made by executives on last week’s earnings call for context. You can find those at this link, but the TL;DR version is “saving money.” If these shows aren’t available, Disney doesn’t have to keep paying people for them. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the basic gist. In Disney’s mind, if it isn’t going to make more episodes of Big Shot, why would it keep the people who made Big Shot happy? (Yes, it’s kind of messed up.)
And ultimately that’s the saddest thing here. Being on this list certainly feels like the nail in the coffin for Willow; io9 has reached out to showrunner Jon Kasdan for comment. We’ll update this piece if we hear back—but for now, you’ve got a week to binge it, along with all these others.
Correction: 5/18/23 7:45 p.m.: We originally referred to the list above as complete but Disney clarified it is not complete, so that change has been made.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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