In a surprise announcement, Amazon Prime Video has cancelled its Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer-led action comedy series “Ride or Die” despite strong viewership and good reviews.
The series follows Debbie Claybourne (Octavia Spencer), who learns her best friend Judith Burton (Hannah Waddingham) is an international assassin when they are forced to go on the run together after an assassination attempt goes wrong. Ed Skrein, Calam Lynch, Savannah Steyn, Jamie Parker, Jacky Ido, with Sylvia Hoeks and Bill Nighy co-star.
The show launched on July 15th, getting only a fraction of the promotion of some of the more young adult-leaning shows like the raunchy “Off Campus” and the “Legally Blonde” prequel “Elle” scored, yet still drew bigger numbers.
The title immediately hit the top slot in the daily U.S. rankings, eclipsing even theatrical release “Masters of the Universe”. Globally, it was the No.1 most-watched Prime Video original series for its first three weeks.
Third-party analytics firm Luminate saw the title pull in 927,000 U.S. views in two days – far more than “Elle” (477,000) or “Off Campus” (245,000). It shot to No.1 in U.S. minutes watched in its first full week on Luminate, doubling and tripling the numbers of “Elle” and “Off Campus” respectively, and continued to do so the following week.
It even made the Nielsen Weekly Top 10, where it debuted at No.8 on the overall streaming chart and at No. 3 among originals with 869 million minutes viewed before climbing to No. 4 overall and No. 2 among originals in its second week with 922 million minutes.
All in all, it was Prime Video’s most-watched new scripted series in the U.S. from August 2025-July 2026, despite being available for only two weeks in that window. Two months since release, it’s still in the weekly Global Top 10 and is said to have drawn worldwide numbers in the same league as shows that have scored renewals like “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and “Scarpetta”.
Reviews were also solid with a 96% critics/85% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and a decent 72/100 on Metacritic. So why was it cancelled? No-one seems quite sure. What is known is that Paramount Television Studios, which produces the show, is shopping the series to other buyers.
Source: Deadline
