Like many of you, we were devastated to find out that HBO’s ‘Lovecraft Country’ wouldn’t be returning for a season two.
The show was a hit, ratings were great, performances were stellar, and it had already been reported that showrunner Misha Green was writing for the next season.
So, what happened?
According to ‘Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers,’ a new oral history on the network by author James Andrew Miller, ‘Lovecraft Country’ was canceled due to a “toxic” and “hostile” work environment created by Misha as the showrunner, which led other writers not to want to work with her.
“Lovecraft was a beautiful show in terms of its look, its narrative and what I would also consider to be an exceptional marriage of storytelling and music. When the show got canceled, there were two predominant explanations out there. One was it had gotten too expensive. The second was there wasn’t a compelling vision for the next season. It turns out neither was the real reason. I had several sources within HBO and elsewhere — people who worked on the show and people who represented people on the show — who said the environment on the show was not a healthy one. For HBO, it was a double-down on sadness — not only is it losing a show that was such an outlier in terms of what it was trying to say, but then to have a Black showrunner — and a female Black showrunner — is not something that happens every day, and people were incredibly excited about that. So, again, the word I come back to is “sadness” that it was not able to continue.”
Misha, who has since signed an overall deal with Apple, declined to comment on the story.
