Two years ago, Nautilus was big news. A vast, expensive Disney+ prequel to Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Nautilus promised to tell the early story of Captain Nemo as he embarked on an epic submarine adventure, seeking revenge on his former captors the East India Company. A colossal replica submarine was built. Several soundstages on Australia’s Gold Coast were given over to it. Hundreds of crew members were hired alongside hundreds of extras. Filming took almost a year. The Queensland government claimed that the series would inject A$96m into the local economy. It looked certain to be a hit; an exciting new big-budget spectacle, underpinned with contemporary themes, based on a legendary piece of intellectual property. Nautilus couldn’t go wrong.
Except nobody is going to see Nautilus because, even though it has already been made, Disney+ has decided not to stream it. Clearly, this is unusual. The television industry has a long history of dropping previously announced shows for a variety of reasons – 2004’s animated Popetown was canned by the BBC after complaints from Catholics, 2017’s The Cops was axed after reports of creator Louis CK’s sexual misconduct came to light, and 2021’s Ultimate Slip ’N Slide was cancelled after the crew all came down with a highly infectious variant of explosive diarrhoea that can be spread through tainted water. But Disney+ has a different reason for getting rid of Nautilus: it was axed as a cost-cutting exercise.
In May, Disney+ announced a content removal plan designed to cut US$1.5bn worth of content, meaning it substantially reduces the company’s value, giving it a lot less tax to pay. Nautilus is not the only victim: a live-action TV adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles was also completed and then axed. Disney isn’t the only network to abandon shows that have largely been made, with HBO Max cancelling the second season of feminist porn comedy Minx just as it was finishing production (only for Starz to buy it, saving it from never seeing the light of day).
AMC has also deleted shows with completed and unaired seasons, such as the animated drama Pantheon and legal drama 61st Street, for similar tax purposes. It pulled the plug on its adaptation of Adrienne Celt’s Invitation to a Bonfire partway through production. One US sitcom, Chad, was pulled just hours before it was due to air on US network TBS.
Shows are also steadily vanishing from streaming platforms. Earlier this year, Disney+ removed a range of high-profile titles such as Willow, The One and Only Ivan, Big Shots and The Mysterious Benedict Society. Nor is it alone. In a similar move, Warner Bros Discovery has also removed dozens of shows like Westworld, Raised by Wolves, Gordita Chronicles, Run and Love Life from its platforms to save money, as has Paramount+ with its Grease spin-off The Pink Ladies and Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone remake.
Adding to the sense that all of television is disappearing, the WGA and SAG strikes are causing several shows to shut down. Season two of 1923, season six of The Chi, along with Night Court, Emily in Paris, Severance, Silo and Stranger Things have all been indefinitely delayed by strike action. During the last writer’s strike in 2008, this sort of delay spelt the end for shows such as Bionic Woman, The 4400 and Cavemen, so it isn’t unreasonable to assume that some of this year’s crop will also fail to return.
Obviously, this isn’t good for the people who make TV shows. Part of the appeal of a streaming service, from a creative standpoint, is that your output is just there. You could reconcile all the years of effort, hard work and frustration that it took to bring your idea to fruition with the fact that it would always be around, on a submenu somewhere, ready to be discovered. But that is no longer a guarantee. It must be galling.
What is upsetting about this as subscribers is that we have come to see streaming platforms as bottomless archives for everything that has ever been made. After all, the big expense of making a television programme comes from actually making it; compared to that, the cost of hosting it on a website – which is what streaming platforms are – should be negligible. Not only is it horribly cynical of the streamers to kick off shows whenever they need to save a bit of cash, but it creates a lot of uncertainty. If Warner Bros Discovery can get rid of Westworld, then what next? Game of Thrones? Succession? The Sopranos? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Disney says that it is working to find a new home for Nautilus. Maybe Netflix will buy it, or one of the networks will use it as a space filler when the WGA and SAG strikes mean that their own content starts running dry? But there’s no guarantee. When Willow was removed from Disney+ earlier this year, there was no suggestion that it would be shown anywhere ever again, and the lack of interest shown by other streamers has pretty much sealed its fate. Perhaps Nautilus faces a similar watery grave. What a shame.
