Netflix produces more series than any other streaming service – and accordingly also sells the most series again. The reason for this is usually a fairly simple cost-benefit calculation, as the example of this $200 million series shows.
Actually, 2021 is not that far away even in the entertaining series cosmos. As a reminder: in 2021, top-class and celebrated series such as “Arcane”, “Dopesick”, “Loki”, “Mare of Easttown”, “The White Lotus”, “Only Murders in the Building”, “WandaVision”, “Lupin” or others “Squid Games”. All these series have made waves, sometimes surprisingly – but lastingly. It was a year of big surprises and hits, the starting signal for a new phase of the MCU in the series universe and, above all, extremely successful for Netflix. And then there is the other side: series that have an enormously high budget, but disappeared straight away. One of them is “Jupiter’s Legacy”.
Jupiter’s Legacy is the second most expensive Netflix series of all time
Anyone who is now asking “Jupiter’s what?” is probably not alone. And Netflix has probably invested 200 million US dollars (USD) in the series. With 8 episodes, this corresponds to a proud price of 25 million USD per episode. Of course, the calculation is not that simple in detail. Nevertheless, “Jupiter’s Legacy” would make it the second most expensive Netflix series of all time – “Stranger Things” is currently enthroned at number 1 – and raise it to a level with Disney’s MCU series.
The production should then probably compete with exactly these series. Because at the center of the plot is a group of superheroes, the Union of Justice. In fact, Netflix lacks a notable dedicated superhero franchise.
The reason for the exploding costs can be found in several places. $50 million is due solely to the purchase of comics company Millarworld, although it’s not entirely clear how that counts toward the $200 million total cost. In addition, there are said to have been various disputes behind the scenes, which, among other things, led to a showrunner change during production.
“Jupiter’s Legacy” canceled after just one season
Among other things, the horrendous costs may have been the reason for the early cancellation of the series after just one season. Netflix rarely or not at all comment on the reasons for a series being discontinued. In the recent past alone, the streaming service prematurely canceled numerous prominent productions: Examples include “Goosebumps at Midnight”, the first season of which set a world record. The cancellation of the German blockbuster series “1899” also caused an outcry, as did the official confirmation of the end of “Mindhunter”.
However, this outcry was almost entirely absent from “Jupiter’s Legacy”. One of the reasons for this is that the series was hardly noticed at the start. It did appear briefly in the Netflix charts right after the release in 2021, but then disappeared again straight away.
Why does hardly anyone know “Jupiter’s Legacy”?
One reason is certainly that the title hardly appeared on the streaming service’s homepage at the time. In addition, the marketing held back compared to other large in-house productions of the provider. And even if Netflix often doesn’t seem to care about negative reviews, they can of course also lead to people not watching a series. The reviews for “Jupiter’s Legacy” were pretty mixed.
The series has one on IMDb rating of 6.7the score at Rotten Tomatoes is even higher at only 42 percent. Many criticize, among other things, the costumes and the general look of the title. The lack of pacing and the lack of intensity of the action scenes are also repeatedly mentioned by critics.
It is also interesting that in this context hardly anyone talks about the series anymore. Despite the high costs, which have thus fizzled out, “Jupiter’s Legacy” is not on the usual lists of the streaming service’s big flops. The series has thus literally disappeared into oblivion.