NBC has pulled the comedy Powerless from their weekly lineup. As a result of the comic book movie boom created indirectly by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the number of comic book adaptations being added to the television roster only continue to grow with each new pilot season. Whether it be Marvel’s Netflix Defenders series, or DC’s growing, critically-beloved TV lineup on the CW, superheroes are fighting crime both in your local cineplexes and living rooms on a fairly regular basis nowadays. But one of the few genres that none of these series have really committed or ventured into up until this point is comedy.
In fact, that’s exactly what made NBC’s Powerless such an interesting new addition when it first premiered earlier this year. Starring Vanessa Hudgens, Alan Tudyk, Danny Pudi, Ron Funches, and more, the series was an office sitcom set within the DC Universe (though specifically, the Earth-P of said universe). It focused on the everyday lives of several workers at Wayne Industries, and their daily efforts to create new technological gadgets that could protect citizens from the destruction caused by the superheroes and supervillains fighting within their cities.
However, things haven’t been looking good for Powerless these past few weeks, after the comedy series failed to make much of a splash in the mainstream. In an interesting turn of events today, NBC has officially removed Powerless from its weekly Tuesday night lineup, with no new episode scheduled to air next week either. While no official announcements have been made by the network, regarding Powerless’ future, the series has also been suspiciously removed from the NBC website. Executive producer Patrick Schumacker took to his Twitter account to comment on the schedule change, saying that fans probably shouldn’t expect any good news to come from this:
#Powerless will not air this week or next. This, I know for sure. I can guess some other things but they’re not good. Thanks for watching.— Patrick Schumacker (@PMSchumacker) April 25, 2017
This isn’t a really surprising turn of events, unfortunately for Powerless, when looking purely at the show’s ratings over the past few months. After premiering to initially soft numbers back in February, the DC-comics comedy series has been on a steady decline in viewership ever since, calling into question the possibility of a second season renewal.
NBC quietly removing the series from its weekly lineup and its website only further reinforces those assumptions, all of which point to Powerless not coming back for the 2017-18 TV season. The series was met with middling to lukewarm reviews also, even despite its immensely talented cast and ability to throw out some legitimately obscure DC Comics references from time to time. So all of this and more point towards Powerless likely going down as one of the few failures to come out of this new post-MCU boom in comic book adaptations on the small screen. It’s not the first by any means, and probably won’t be the worst either.
Screen Rant will keep you updated on Powerless as more news comes in.
Source: NBC
