HBO Max’s WestWorld‘s decline has been one of the most frustrating moments in television, and as a reboot film gets announced, fans are going back to a show they had to say goodbye to without a warning. After it’s quite deletion from the streaming library, we are now getting to watch what could have been a potential season, thanks to David Koepp.
When Westworld premiered in October 2016, it was quite a cultural event. The first season pulled in an average cumulative audience of 12 million viewers, making it the most-watched debut season in HBO history at that point. There were fans all over the place and it became one of the most loved shows on the platform. Why then, was it cancelled?
Why was Westworld cancelled?
The pilot alone cost $25 million to produce, with per-episode budgets sitting between $8 and $10 million but HBO knew what it was signing up for. By the time the fourth and final season came around, the total seasonal budget had climbed to at least $160 million.
But here’s where the story turns. Viewership did not hold and the audience shrank from around 12 million down to roughly 4 million by the show’s later seasons which is a brutal drop for any series, but especially one burning through cash at that rate. By the time season four finished airing, average viewership had fallen 81 percent compared to the first season and then the math just stopped working.
HBO officially canceled Westworld in November 2022, after it’s fourth season wrapped. Since it ws originally written as a six season show, a lot of questions were left unanswered and fans were still confused as to what narrative the show ended on.
James Marsden, who starred in the series, told Rolling Stone that the ending was a genuine disappointment as he said
“I wish it was about more than financial success,”
Adding that it would have been nice to complete the story they set out to tell. That quote captures the whole tragedy of it. Everyone on that set knew what they were building. The people cutting the checks had different math on their spreadsheets.
The show is a reminder of what happens when a network loses its nerve on something ambitious. Even though it had six years worth of story to tell, it was scraped off without giving fans an answer. But hopefully all that will be fixed with Koepp’s new direction.
Edited by Nibir Konwar