10 Flop TV Shows That Made ONE Huge Mistake
4. Reshooting Most Of It - The Idol
When HBO's drama series The Idol was cancelled, there was a chorus of "Oh no, anyway."
Sam Levinson's provocative series about a pop star (Lily-Rose Depp) and her "complicated" relationship with a cult leader (Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye) was largely panned for its writing and The Weeknd's performance.
It was little surprise to anyone who'd been observing the show's rickety production history, given that original director Amy Seimetz left the project after 80% of the show had been filmed.
Reports indicated that this was due to Tesfaye's concerns that Seimetz's approach was too concerned with the "female perspective," at which point Levinson rewrote the series and reshot it from scratch.
According to some who worked on The Idol, Levinson sought to focus more on the "degrading" love story and include more nudity and sex in the show than in Seimetz's version.
While there's no guarantee that Seimetz's take on the material would've been leaps and bounds better, given her filmmaking chops and evident desire to explore the story from a more feminist-skewing perspective, it likely would've been superior to Levinson's ultimately leering, ponderous version.