Feig also discusses why the experience wasn’t “a total rug-pull,” loving the storytelling impact of the “woke movement” and producing a sex-positive show that isn’t about daring the audience to watch.
Last May, Ellen Rapoport’s workplace comedy Minx — which caused a bit of a stir thanks to its pilot episode’s parade of private parts — was met with a resounding show of support in the form of a season two renewal at the Warner Bros. Discovery streamer, then named HBO Max. But by December, amid a somewhat unprecedented money-saving effort led by WBD CEO David Zaslav, the platform (now dubbed simply Max) reversed course and canceled the show’s second season with just a single week left of filming.
Minx‘s axing sent up alarm bells in the live-action scripted space, which found itself being written off for tax purposes, much like a number of titles in the animated space earlier that year. It also signaled a new, unsettling era in the streaming age for creators and their crews, who now were not just facing the standard renewal chopping block in the face of shortened seasons and lower residuals, but the possibility that their show might be pulled from a streamer with no place for it to be viewed elsewhere.