The sci-fi comedy series Space Force, starring Steve Carell and co-created by comedy legend Greg Daniels, will not be renewed by Netflix for a third season.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming platform canceled the program due to poor ratings and a budget that was still too expensive even after the series shifted production from Los Angeles to Vancouver in Season 2 to save money.
The plot of Space Force focused around a group of US Department of Defense officials entrusted with forming a new Space Force branch dedicated to populating the moon (among other things). Though Daniels has stated that this version of Space Force takes place in an other world, the notion arose from the former real-life President forming a comparable branch in our reality.
The show stars John Malkovich (Dr. Adrian Mallory), Ben Schwartz (F. Tony Scarapiducci), Tawny Newsome (Captain Angela Ali), Lisa Kudrow (Maggie Naird), and Diana Silvers in addition to Carell as General Mark Naird (Erin Naird).
That ensemble is stacked with talent, which may have contributed to the show’s demise – according to THR, the show’s enormous budget was apparently due in part to the actors’ pay, with Carell earning more than $1 million each episode. Space Force was supposedly unable to (hum) launch into a third season due to the high upfront costs and poor reviews for both seasons.
The announcement comes after Netflix recorded a 200,000-subscriber decline since the start of 2022. In the aftermath of that announcement, the streamer has canceled a number of other series, and Space Force appears to be one of them. Surprisingly, the streaming service is apparently spending a lot of money on one of its biggest hits, with Stranger Things 4 costing upwards of $30 million every episode. So Netflix appears to be ready to spend a lot of money, but only on sure-fire hits.