Wolf Pack, which we thought had the potential to be one of the best Paramount Plus shows, is being sent to the farm. The Sarah Michelle Gellar-starring supernatural series has been cancelled after just one season of spooky storytelling.
The show is based on the popular book series of the same name, and it follows a pair of teenagers who are attacked when a Californian wildfire awakens a terrifying creature – and whose bite has some spooky side-effects.
It seems that the news will be a surprise to the team behind the show though. According to Deadline, while a second season was never officially announced it was very much a work in progress, with production planned to start just weeks from now in February 2024.
Why Wolf Pack has been sent packing
Poor reviews probably didn't help. While the show has a respectable 86% from the fans on Rotten Tomatoes, its critical rating is almost half that at just 44%. The AV Club said it didn't have "enough bite" and The Guardian wasn't impressed by its "cheesy slow-motion, cheesy fast-motion montages, super-cheesy match cuts and at least one twanging continuity error", calling the show "mind-bendingly bad". Meanwhile Queer Horror Movies was far from impressed by the "bad FX, the stock characters, the uninspired, undercooked storylines, and the misuse of SMG".
Of course, studios don't really care about the critics. There's no shortage of apparently critic-proof shows that continue to stream because they bring in the right kind of numbers for the streamers. But clearly Wolf Pack wasn't doing that for Paramount Plus, which is currently embroiled in massive cost-cutting that sadly also means lots of layoffs. According to Deadline, there are even more cuts to come, with anticipated layoffs "thought to be in the hundreds including the programming teams".
That inevitably means more shows are likely to get the ax. According to Paramount's Bob Bakish in a memo to his team this week (as reported by Deadline), the streamer will be "focusing our resources on the most powerful, resonant franchises, films and series that perform across platforms globally”.
