The Peripheral, A League of Their Own cancelled at Amazon despite second season renewals

The Peripheral and A League of Their Own had both been renewed for second seasons, but it was announced today that both shows have been cancelled.

The Peripheral is a sci-fi drama based on William Gibson’s 2014 book of the same name that stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Flynne Fisher, a young woman trying to hold together the pieces of her broken family in a forgotten corner of tomorrow’s America. The series cost a whopping $175 million and didn’t hold audiences as much as Amazon had hoped, but it was nonetheless renewed for a shortened second season earlier this year. The ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have been cited as the reason behind the cancellation.

The cost of The Peripheral combined with the lackluster audience led some insiders to question why the series was renewed in the first place, but Amazon may not have wanted to jeopardize their deal with Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. The Westworld creators executive produced the project and have another big Prime Video series in the pipeline with an adaptation of the Fallout video game series.

A League of Their Own was a reimagining of Penny Marshall’s beloved 1992 classic. The series widened the lens to tell the story of an entire generation of women who dreamed of playing professional baseball, both in the All-American Girls Professional League and outside of it. Much like The Peripheral, A League of Their Own was an expensive series to produce and didn’t have the biggest audience. The second season renewal would have brought the series back for just four episodes, which would have brought the story to a close, but it seems it won’t come to pass. Update: Sources told THR that Sony Pictures Television are planning to find a new home for the series as scripts for all four episodes were completed before the WGA strike.

Once again, the production delay caused by the strikes is said to be the reason why. Production wouldn’t have been able to begin before the new year, which would have pushed the debut to 2025. This would have put a three-year gap between the first and second seasons of A League of Their Own.

I’m sure there are more than a few fans of The Peripheral and A League of Their Own who are sad to learn that both shows have been cancelled.