HBO Boss Addresses Lovecraft Country’s Cancellation

Television fans were handed some heartbreaking news earlier this year, when it was announced that Lovecraft Country was cancelled after one season. The HBO series, which debuted to critical and fan acclaim in the summer of 2020, has since gone on to score eighteen nominations at this weekend’s Emmy Awards, making the news that it won’t be continuing especially bittersweet. In a recent interview with Variety, HBO chief content officer Casey Bloys spoke about why the sophomore season ended up being scrapped, attributing it to “a confluence of factors.”

“When you make the decision to not go forward with a show, it’s usually a confluence of factors,” Bloys explained. “And that was the case here. It has to be something we think makes sense for us. In this case, we couldn’t get there. I don’t think it would be fair to point at any one particular thing. I think that the work Misha [Green] did, and the recognition that it got, this doesn’t change any of that.”

Shortly after the cancellation was announced, Green took to social media to share the plans for Season 2, which would have included an ambitious, zombie-filled extension of the story. Letitia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollett) and Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) were expected to return, and the season was expected to focus on a “new generation” of characters, including Diana “Dee” Freeman (Jada Harris) and George Freeman, the son of Atticus and Leti.

“We know the direction,” Green had teased in an interview last year. “It’s about a direction. You have a direction, and then you explore and you find where it takes you. Even starting this season of this show, we knew what direction we wanted to go in, for subsequent seasons. It was very exciting. Matt Ruff’s novel is about reclaiming genre spaces for people of color. For me, that was an open book. Being a genre fan, there’s so much to play in. It’s unending. And the idea that it’s not just for Black people but you can open it up for all people of color is exciting to me.”

Despite the cancellation, Green and Smollett will still be working in the HBO and HBO Max realm, with Green writing a Black Canary spinoff movie, which would see Smollett reprise her role from Birds of Prey.