On paper, The Get Down—Netflix's big budget hip-hop musical—had a lot going for it. Justice Smith, as a rap tyro named Ezekiel; the Hamilton Tony-winner Daveed Diggs playing Ezekiel's older self, performing lyrics by Nas. A pilot co-written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. An episode written by award-winning music journalist Nelson George and hip-hop consultation from Grandmaster Flash.
But at the center of all of this was Baz Luhrmann, the director who turned works from F. Scott Fitzgerald and Shakespeare into campy, romanticized, teenage spectacles. The result was something of a mess—the origin stories of disco and hip-hop with elements of blaxploitation and kung fu told through the fantastical Luhrmann lens. Something so uniquely American as hip-hop suddenly felt like make-believe.
And after set backs, a ton of money, and 11 episodes, Netflix has announced it has canceled The Get Down after one season.
"The simple truth is, I make movies. And the thing with movies is, that when you direct them, there can be nothing else in your life," Luhrmann wrote in a post on Facebook. "As for the real future of the show, the spirit of The Get Down, and the story it has begun to tell... it has its own life. One that lives on today and will continue to be told somewhere, somehow, because of you, the fans and the supporters."
From the start, the project was marred by production delays, and the first season was cut to 11 from the originally announced 13 episodes. (Netflix has not responded to a request for comment as to why the series was cancelled.)
"The truth is that at a certain point, there was no precedent for how you make such a music-driven show," Luhrmann told The Hollywood Reporter when original showrunner Shawn Ryan left the project following the delays. "Ultimately, right now, I ultimately was asked to take the position of being responsible for everything and yes, I am responsible for everything, including saying we have to stop and get it right.… We would start doing it [shooting] and I was being asked to get more involved because it was either not working or it had to be re-engineered."
Beyond the delays, The Get Down was one of the most expensive projects in Netflix and television history. The entire first season cost an estimated $120 million—beating out Marco Polo, which previously held that title with a $90 million price tag. (Marco Polo was canceled in December after only two seasons.)
The Get Down is Netflix's first show to be canceled after one season. While the streaming service does not release ratings, The Get Down's budget, production delays, and middling quality offer clues as to why the show was shut down. What's interesting is that The Get Down's cancellation mirrors two other high-profile television failures from acclaimed cinematic auteurs: HBO's Vinyl, co-created by Martin Scorsese, was cancelled after one season, and NBC's Smash, produced by Steven Spielberg, was cancelled after two seasons.
