Earlier this week, the news came that Disney was exiting its agreement with the BBC regarding its long-running sci-fi series “Doctor Who”.
Disney dissolved the partnership following two seasons with Ncuti Gatwa in the role of The Doctor, and the show will return to the arms of the BBC with a new Christmas Special being made for the end of next year.
But why end the partnership? Many have suspected that the show’s performance on Disney+ didn’t do the kind of numbers that Disney wanted. There’s also been a backlash against the series for a perceived quality drop in a show that was already struggling with that issue for years prior to the Disney deal going through.
Now, a new report from Deadline has gone into the reasons for Disney exiting its deal, and while those two things did play a part, another factor came in that might not have been expected – it was too expensive.
Both seasons of the Gatwa-led series failed to register on Nielsen and Luminate’s streaming charts, and the show’s numbers also failed to achieve the more regular ratings of Jodie Whittaker’s final season in 2021.
A source for the trade says Gatwa never ‘fully embraced’ being The Doctor, a role that requires being something of a brand ambassador – whereas David Tennant, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi understood that responsibility.
Another source says the show had become “too woke for Trump’s USA” and the diversity push in the show had become a “factor in Disney’s minds” when considering a renewal.
But the big surprise is that the show’s increased budget caused problems. The Disney-era “Doctor Who” reportedly came in at a cost of around $8.5-9.2 million an episode. That’s way up on the BBC era, which spent at most $2.5-3 million per episode and often considerably less.
One former exec who worked with the show says, “Budget limitations used to help the idiosyncrasies of the show. Big budgets can cause a problem.”
The show will still air its spin-off, “The War Between the Land and the Sea”, sometime in the near future before the year-long break ahead of its Christmas special next year.
