10 Hyped 2020 TV Shows ALREADY Cancelled

8. Bastards

With Apple TV+ launching this month, the new streaming service is taking a leaf out of Netflix's book, adopting the House Of Cards's policy of taking a property that's already proved successful overseas and remaking it with a big Hollywood star.

Apple won a bidding war to grab the chance to produce Bastards, a remake of a hit Israeli series adapted by Homeland's Howard Gordon and Law & Order: SVU's Warren Leight. Richard Gere was attached to play one of a pair of Vietnam veterans who go on a vengeful shooting spree after the death of a woman they both once loved, exploring long buried secrets and the characters' "resentment of today's self-absorbed millennials".

In the end, Apple executives found Gordon and Leight's scripts too dark for their service's "aspirational" brand. They were hoping for a series which focused more on the bond of friendship between the two veterans, a vigilante justice story that was lighter on the actual vigilante violence stuff. Or maybe they just realised that "today's self-absorbed millennials" are a big part of a streaming service's potential audience.

Either way, with Gordon and Leight unwilling to compromise their vision, Apple pulled the plug on Bastards in September, making it their first cancellation before their service had even begun.