Netflix has scrapped several animated projects, including Ava DuVernay’s Wings of Fire. On Tuesday, the streamer scrapped that project along with the preschooler-aimed Antiracist Baby, and the film With Kind Regards From Kindergarten. Netflix also scraped the documentary companion to Stamped From the Beginning, titled Stamped: Racism Antiracism and You. Stamped From the Beginning is in post-production and will continue to move forward.
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Wings of Fire was originally announced by Netflix in 2021. The project was to be based on Tui T. Sutherland’s children’s books and would have been adapted into a 10-episode series with DuVernay set to executive produce the series which tells the story of dragon tribes in a generations-long battle over lost treasure. Antiracist Baby was based on Dr. Ibram X Kendi’s children’s book of the same name and would have featured a series of animated vignettes set to music. Kendi also wrote Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You. With Kind Regards From Kindergarten would have followed the story of two young friends who drift apart when one of them loses their imagination. That project had not been announced prior to being scrapped. Last month, Netflix also canceled plans for two other animated projects, the series Dino Daycare and Boons and Curses.
According to Variety, sources at Netflix indicate that the decision to scrap these projects was a creative one and not a financial one. The distinction is important. Netflix recently laid off around 2 percent of its work force — around 150 staff members — as well as reported a net loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year, marking the streamer’s first decline in a decade.
“Our revenue growth has slowed considerably as our results and forecast below show,” Netflix executives wrote in a press release to its shareholders.
The letter then went on to partially blame the practice of password-sharing for the company’s shortfalls.
“Streaming is winning over linear, as we predicted, and Netflix titles are very popular globally. However, our relatively high household penetration – when including the large number of households sharing accounts – combined with competition, is creating revenue growth headwinds,” the letter added. “The big COVID boost to streaming obscured the picture until recently. While we work to reaccelerate our revenue growth – through improvements to our service and more effective monetization of multi-household sharing – we’ll be holding our operating margin at around 20%.”
Are you disappointed that Wings of Fire has been scrapped by Netflix? What about some of the other projects? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.
