Deadline reports (and other trades have followed) that Swamp Thing is no more following an earlier decision to reduce the first season’s number of episodes down to 10 from 13 while the show was still in production.
While many have speculated that Swamp Thing’s production woes were a reflection of the studio’s lack of faith, the reason the series has been cancelled seems to be rooted in a governmental budgeting error. Even though Swamp Thing takes place in Marais, Louisiana, the show was shot in Wilmington, North Carolina where it recently qualified for a multimillion-dollar funding grant from N.C. Department of Commerce.
The problem, it seems, is that a recent communication error led North Carolina’s House of Representatives’ appropriations committee to believe that the grant fund had excess to the tune of about $67 million, which it did not. While the mistake’s since been caught, it means that overall, the state can’t offer nearly as much to production companies that chose to shoot there, meaning that studios would have to foot more of the bill themselves.
Like every other initiative, DC Universe is being reevaluated following the completion of AT&T acquisition of Time Warner as WarnerMedia has put an emphasis on the launch of a new streaming platform. There have been questions how DC Universe fits into those plans.
