Summary
There’s bad news for fans ofClone High,as the cult classic gets canceled for a second time after two seasons of a reboot series on streaming network Max, as the show failed to garner the expected amount of support.
Clone Highwas an early 2000s show with a unique premise, as it saw a plethora of famous historical figures being cloned, aged up to their teen years, and placed in the eponymous high school by the aptly named US government-backed Secret Board of Shadowy Figures as one big military experiment. While the show performed poorly during its one-season run and even sparked controversy due to its portrayal of Gandhi, it quickly became a cult classic with a lot of fans post-mortem. As such, there was a lot of excitement when it was revealed thatthe show was getting a reboot with the original creators set to returnand would eventually get a two-season order from HBO for the then-namedHBO Maxstreaming platform.
Theupdated take on the OGClone Highwould debut on streaming to decidedly unimpressed responses from the older contingent of fans and would carry on with the rest of its two-season run with the shadow of that botched debut hanging over it. Despite a marked improvement in the quality of the show by the time the second reboot season rolled out, the writing was on the wall for many when it came to the show’s chances of being picked up for more seasons. Now, the worst has been confirmed by executives at Max, who issued a statement toTVLineconcerning the project’s cancelation at the streamer while praising the efforts of the creative team behind the project.
Although Max will not proceed with a third season of Clone High, we will always cherish our creative partnership with Chris Miller, Phil Lord, Bill Lawrence, Erica Rivinoja, Erik Durbin, Judah Miller, Corey Campodonico, Alex Bulkley, and the team at MTV Entertainment Studios. The incredibly talented voice actors, writers, cast, and crew provided the opportunity to thaw out these legendary characters.
While both the original and reboot shows have a perfect 100% average Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes (albeit with less than 10 certified reviews each), the reboot series is significantly lower in audience score, sitting at 64% to the origin show’s 84%. This mirrors the show’s earlier reception, which saw it do terrible numbers during its original run and thenmanage to find new life after it was canceled. While the same could probably happen to the reboot series, this isn’t exactly helpful to those funding the reboot for streaming, hence the cancelation. Bringing back a cult classic series was always going to be a risky move, as the success of the show rests on nostalgia and the quick growth of a fanbase that is almost implicitly difficult to navigate for newcomers. Furthermore, any changes to the show, either for better or worse, play out much differently when the audience has had almost two decades to obsess over every facet of the show and craft the perfect revival in their collective imaginations.
Some fans who are sad to see the series go have already begun to point the finger at David Zaslav, citing either nearsighted business decisions or the fact that WBD doesn’t own the IP here. While this could be the case, the reality is that not every reboot can make the sort of impact that a show likeX-Men ‘97has. The rebirth of the classic 90s cartoon was so successful that if the company knows what’s best,future MCU projects will be modeled on it. As for Clone High, it finds itself in much the same place it was before: canceled due to middling reception and stuck on a cliffhanger. Fans who are still interested can only wait and see if lightning strikes twice and the show is picked up once again, hopefully less than two decades from now.
