Prodigal Son – Picture: Warner Bros. Television Distribution
One of the many network shows to face the axe in 2021 has been Prodigal Son, the highly-rated crime drama series from Chris Fedak and Sam Sklaver. Since the announcement of the cancelation, fan campaigns have sprung up to save the show including pitches to Netflix to do just that.
To recap, Prodigal Son was one of Fox’s biggest shows in recent years. Headlined by Michael Sheen and Tom Payne, the procedural drama ran for two seasons before being canceled in May 2021.
Netflix has never shown Prodigal Son with it recently being put onto HBO Max and hasn’t made it to Netflix outside the United States either.
There have been numerous people who point out that the show had plenty of legs beyond a season 3 and one fan of the show reached out to us to cover the growing movement.
Pointing us to a website set up to help efforts to save the show, Elisa DeCarlo told us:
““Prodigal Son” resonates with fans, particularly the focus on the main character, Malcolm Bright, who visibly manages mental illness in a non-stigmatizing way. With a lead character who suffers from C-PTSD and anxiety disorder, and a supporting cast that features a majority of actors of color including two Asian actors, the timing of the cancellation itself raises eyebrows as it occurred during Mental Health Awareness month and AAPI history month. Fox even continued to promote the POC on “Prodigal Son” in its marketing while simultaneously canceling the show. Fox has even been running ads for the show in recent weeks!”
Through various petitions across the internet, the show’s following has rallied behind revival efforts. The biggest petition we’ve seen is soon closing in on 50,000 signatures on Change.org. Fan campaigns are nothing new of course. Netflix has had plenty of petitions aimed at it throughout the years with by far the biggest being Anne with an E which surpassed 1.5 million signatures.
Could and will Netflix revive Prodigal Son?
While in the early days of the Netflix Original efforts, we would’ve given a much better chance of Prodigal Son finding a home on Netflix but nowadays, it’s highly unlikely.
Netflix has focused on its own brand new titles.
Also, one of the key differences for this show compared to Netflix’s past revival efforts is that it has no internal data on how well the show performs.
In the case of both Designated Survivor and Lucifer, both were streaming on Netflix internationally. That’s not been the case with Prodigal Son which has streamed on other platforms since the show first debuted.
There are also issues to contend with such as licensing for the first two seasons being dotted around meaning Netflix would likely struggle to have the full collection making a less than ideal situation for Netflix subscribers.
Our best guess would be that if it’s to be revived anywhere, it’d be HBO Max but there’s been no indication of a move such as this to date. With that said, Michael Sheen’s involvement apparently caused production issues which could mean a revival is near impossible.
Would you like to see Netflix revive Prodigal Son? Let us know in the comment section down below.