From what I understand in television writing it was a constant struggle of “should we write a cliffhanger hoping it gets us renewed” to “we should have some closure in case we get cancelled”, since many writers had no idea what would happen.
ENT’s trip to 1944 between seasons 3 and 4. Or in other words what must be the writer’s “you made us make this temporal cold war cake and by koala we are gonna make you eat it” letter to the execs.
I don’t think we know of a case where it convinced a studio executive, but then again we know very little about the reasons why some shows get renewed and some don’t.
We do know cases where ending on a cliffhanger helped drumm up enough fan engagement to reverse a cancellation (timeless on nbc is a recent(ish) example for that)
Or even hold people’s interest until the next season started? The Walking Dead is the poster child of this and their big cliffhanger completely backfired on them when the story got spoiled months before the new season aired and pissed off the fans for a multitude if reasons.
I think with modern, on-demand viewing, cliffhangers should be banned because they don’t have any of the benefits they did when you had to watch on a specific day at a specific time to keep up and every other fan was in the same boat.
From what I understand in television writing it was a constant struggle of “should we write a cliffhanger hoping it gets us renewed” to “we should have some closure in case we get cancelled”, since many writers had no idea what would happen.
Has ending on a cliff-hanger ever worked to get a show renewed?
ENT’s trip to 1944 between seasons 3 and 4. Or in other words what must be the writer’s “you made us make this temporal cold war cake and by koala we are gonna make you eat it” letter to the execs.
It kinda did with Sense8, due to overwhelming fan support for at least completing the story. Netflix caved and they produced a movie to wrap it up.
Twin Peaks but it took a couple decades lol
Depends on how you look at it.
I don’t think we know of a case where it convinced a studio executive, but then again we know very little about the reasons why some shows get renewed and some don’t.
We do know cases where ending on a cliffhanger helped drumm up enough fan engagement to reverse a cancellation (timeless on nbc is a recent(ish) example for that)
Or even hold people’s interest until the next season started? The Walking Dead is the poster child of this and their big cliffhanger completely backfired on them when the story got spoiled months before the new season aired and pissed off the fans for a multitude if reasons.
I think with modern, on-demand viewing, cliffhangers should be banned because they don’t have any of the benefits they did when you had to watch on a specific day at a specific time to keep up and every other fan was in the same boat.