Manifest Narrowly Misses Big Netflix Record

Manifest has been cancelled after three seasons, and the members of the show’s ensemble cast have since been released from their contracts. Despite all that, the former NBC show continues to be one of the most popular shows on Netflix. Earlier this summer, the first two seasons of Manifest were added to the streamer and the series quickly catapulted to the top of the platform’s “Top 10” rankings. After debuting in the second slot on the list, Manifest quickly rose to number one and spent 27 straight days in the position.

The series was just two days from tying Netflix’s record for most days atop the list when it was bumped back down to second place by Netflix’s Virgin River. Now, Manifest is tied with Tiger King for the second-longest run on Netflix’s Top 10 list at 27 days. Ginny & Georgia sits atop the record charts alone at 29 days.

As IndieWire points out, Manifest is the only non-Netflix show to spend over a week in the Top 10 outside of Lucifer, a show that started on Fox before being bought by the streamer. Manifest has been so popular on the streamer, Netflix was initially in talks to continue the series, though those plans eventually crumbled.

Even though the series has now seemingly fallen by the wayside, Manifest creator Jeff Rake has said he’s willing to retool the ending of the series into a movie should a streaming platform want a feature exclusive. The writer had previously said he hoped the series would last six seasons.

“Twenty days after we’ve premiered on Netflix, I’ve kind of moved away from the plan of finding a home for seasons 4, 5, and 6 of Manifest, even though I’ve always talked about Manifest being a six-season show,” Rake recently explained to EW. “Back in the day, I laid out a six-season roadmap for NBC, and I’m halfway through. I had giant cliffhangers in the season 3 finale, so I had every intention to have three more seasons to slow-burn the back half of the story.”

He added, “I’m reading the writing on the wall that we may not find a home for three more seasons of the show, so I moved to plan B: Some platform would bankroll a feature or a movie finale, like we saw with Timeless, Firefly, and Deadwood. I just need a modest budget to tell the story. I am personally sketching out how to consolidate the back half of the series into a much more streamlined, cut-to-the-chase two-hour finale that would distill all of the hanging chads of the series. That’s where my head is at. There is a huge appetite for people wanting to know what’s that end of the story, what happened to the passengers, what ultimately happened to that airplane.”

The series was cancelled after its third season on NBC, and that new batch of episodes will likely find its way to Netflix soon.