Unlike most of Millar’s other works, the superhero comic, with a story that spans decades and prequel titles, had a deep character bench from which to draw, and Netflix saw it as a way to further its own universe-building ambitions to compete with Disney IP heavyweights Marvel and Star Wars.
The series was plagued with issues from the start, with then-showrunner Steven DeKnight initially asking Netflix for a budget that would see at least a $12 million per episode spend, according to sources.
Issues didn’t stop there, however, as even after wrapping production, the show spent an inordinate amount of time of 2020 in post-production.
It is unclear in what range the final budget landed.
To compound problems, Netflix then underwent an executive shuffle that saw its greenlighter, vp original content Cindy Holland, and its two original executive overseers exit the company.
But a day after the cancellation, Nielsen showed Jupiter atop its streaming chart, generating 696 million minutes of view time in the week of May 3-9, better than Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and other original series from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Disney+.
Millar and Netflix spun the cancellation by saying Jupiter is going to be a universe, with a new live-action series — based on an unrelated Millar comic titled Supercrooks — given a series order and folded under a Jupiter umbrella.
The other criticism lobbed at the process is that it has revealed that Millarworld, despite having a creative IP factory in Millar, lacks a seasoned and muscled producer or executive that can really steer the division.