This week, Netflix announced that it had cancelled the popular sports dramedy GLOW, after having already renewed it for a fourth and final season. The series was two episodes into production on Season 4 when the pandemic caused filming to shut down, and Netflix opted to cut its losses with the potential to return to filming not in the immediate future. Marc Maron, who starred in the series as Sam Sylvia, shared some thoughts about the cancellation in an Instagram live video. He suggested Netflix allow the showrunners to conclude the series with a movie, rather than a full fourth season.
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“Let us wrap it up in a two-hour Netflix movie,” Maron said. “Give the showrunners and the cast and the writers the chance to finish the story in a movie, right? Then it’s all fine. That would take the financial pressure off and the writers could play it out, we could shoot it out. The thing about shooting a movie is that when you have the whole shooting script you can be economical about your shooting. I think they could do it in less time than it would take to shoot the show.”
Maron went on to say that the reason behind the cancellation was the show’s cost. With the pandemic keeping cameras from rolling once again, Netflix had to continue to pay for the sets.
“The reason I was given from the showrunners was basically a financial one in that they didn’t want to pay to keep the sets alive anymore,” he continued. “We’ve got two offices and soundstages being leased. They were two and a half episodes in on the day they went into lockdown. I was told that they didn’t want to eat the cost of maintaining the sets for another six or seven months to begin production. So that’s what we heard. Honestly, who knows? The protocols they have in place now, I know there are a lot of things being shot, but we have a big cast and crew. Who knows where we’re going to be in January?”
When the announcement regarding the cancellation was made, the creative minds behind GLOW acknowledged that difficult decisions have to be made in the face of COVID-19, but that it was still incredibly painful to lose out on that final season.
“COVID has killed actual humans. It’s a national tragedy and should be our focus. COVID also apparently took down our show. Netflix has decided not to finish filming the final season of GLOW,” said series creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch. “We were handed the creative freedom to make a complicated comedy about women and tell their stories. And wrestle. And now that’s gone. There’s a lot of sh*tty things happening in the world that are much bigger than this right now. But it still sucks that we don’t get to see these 15 women in a frame together again.”
Are you disappointed to see GLOW get cancelled? Let us know in the comments!
