\n<\/p>\n
Last summer, the writer and producer Aron Eli Coleite was on holiday in Las Vegas with his wife when he received an urgent call from Nicole Clemens, the president of Paramount Television.<\/p>\n
Coleite was the showrunner on \u201cThe Spiderwick Chronicles,\u201d a fantasy series Paramount was producing for Disney+. The show had recently finished production on its first season, but Clemens was calling with bad news: Disney had decided to pull the plug<\/a>, effectively canceling the series before it made it to air.<\/p>\n Without warning, \u201cThe Spiderwick Chronicles\u201d was \u201cbeing turned into one of those tax write-offs that I\u2019d heard so much about,\u201d Coleite said in an interview. Christine McCarthy, the chief financial officer for Disney, had said on an earnings call in May 2023<\/a> that Disney was in the process of a strategic shift that would lead to downsizing and cost-cutting across the board, beginning with the removal and cancellation of some shows on their streaming platforms. \u201cSpiderwick\u201d was a casualty of these cuts, and \u201cthere was no fighting against it,\u201d Coleite said. (Disney declined to comment.)<\/p>\n Clemens said in an interview that she was shocked by the move. \u201cWe\u2019d started a second season, and there was a lot of love and excitement for the project,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was like, whoa.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But after facing certain extinction, \u201cThe Spiderwick Chronicles\u201d was rescued by an unlikely savior: The Roku Channel, the ad-supported streaming platform built into the company\u2019s smart TV interfaces and stand-alone streaming devices. All eight episodes of \u201cThe Spiderwick Chronicles\u201d debuted on Roku last week, joining the platform\u2019s modest but growing library of original content, including the movie \u201cWeird: The Al Yankovic Story\u201d<\/a> and its reboot of \u201cThe Great American Baking Show.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n So far the move has paid off: Roku announced on Tuesday that \u201cSpiderwick\u201d had the best first weekend of any on-demand title on the Roku Channel, in terms of total hours streamed. (The streamer also offers live channels and sports.) Roku declined to give specific numbers, saying only that \u201cSpiderwick\u201d was watched by \u201cmillions of streamers\u201d in its first three days on the platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n The rescue was a stroke of luck for a series that seemed doomed to vanish forever \u2014 a fate that has befallen many other high-profile projects in the past few years, including the films \u201cCoyote vs. Acme\u201d and \u201cBatgirl,\u201d<\/a> both scrapped by Warner Brothers Discovery. Coleite was elated when he learned that Roku would be swooping in to acquire the discarded \u201cSpiderwick.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just that we got to be saved,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was that the work of the 300 artists who came together to make this show was going to be seen and not just tossed in a waste bin.\u201d<\/p>\n Brian Tannenbaum, the head of originals at the Roku Channel, said that \u201cSpiderwick\u201d was a perfect fit for the streamer, explaining that the show\u2019s combination of real-world drama and fantasy magic were in keeping with the whimsical spirit of the Roku brand. When the opportunity to acquire the series was first presented to him, he watched the entire first season over a weekend and \u201cwent after it on Monday morning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Based on the novels by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black \u2014 they were previously adapted into a big-budget movie in 2009<\/a> \u2014 \u201cThe Spiderwick Chronicles\u201d follows the adventures of the Grace family, including the twins Simon (Noah Cottrell) and Jared (Lyon Daniels) and their sister, Mallory (Mychala Lee), who move into an old Victorian estate in rural America and discover a secret world of magic. There are faeries, goblins and villainous ogres, as well as the usual conflicts and milestones around coming of age.<\/p>\n The series, which also stars Joy Bryant and Christian Slater, ages up the child characters from the books \u2014 they\u2019re now teenagers \u2014 and focuses on their emotions as much as the magic. It\u2019s a bit like \u201cHarry Potter\u201d meets \u201cSilver Linings Playbook.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of fantasy stories out there, but they\u2019re usually set in a setting that doesn\u2019t feel real,\u201d said Kat Coiro, who directed several episodes, including the first two. \u201cI loved that it was a real story about a real American family experiencing really tough problems like mental health issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The series originated at Apple TV+ more than five years ago, with Barry Sonnenfeld attached to direct. When Sonnenfeld left in 2020, Coleite replaced him \u2014 somewhat reluctantly, at first, because he recently had made a different magical Victorian house series: \u201cLocke and Key\u201d for Netflix. But by the time \u201cSpiderwick\u201d moved to Disney, Coleite had fallen in love with the show, and, as far as he could tell, Disney felt the same way.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were called a home run by the executives,\u201d he said. Which is why the sudden cancellation came as such a shock.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI thought I had experienced every type of pain there was imaginable as a writer,\u201d he said. \u201cI have sold pilots that didn\u2019t get into production. I\u2019ve made pilots that didn\u2019t go to series. But here was something completely new, where we could finish an entire series, be done with it, and they could say no, now it\u2019s a tax write-off, and no one is ever going to see this again. It\u2019s really a cynical practice, to devalue the work of artists that make them profit.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahead of the show\u2019s debut, Coleite worried that the Disney cancellation would lead critics and viewers to assume that \u201cif Disney didn\u2019t want it, there must be something wrong with it.\u201d He said that he actively combated that idea, reaching out to journalists to challenge headlines he considered misleading and messaging people on social media when they posted something untrue.<\/p>\n \u201cI know everyone loves a failure in Hollywood, but that\u2019s not the case with this story,\u201d he added. \u201cThis was not a reject by Disney. That\u2019s not why it was canceled.\u201d<\/p>\n The show\u2019s performance thus far \u201cdelivered results beyond expectations,\u201d Coleite wrote in an email on Wednesday. \u201cI am overwhelmed and appreciative of the audience\u2019s response.\u201d<\/p>\n