10 Recent TV Shows That Were Sent Out To Die
2. Too Old To Die Young
Amazon must've known what they were getting into when they hired Nicolas Winding Refn to produce a 10-episode crime series for their platform, Too Old to Die Young.
Refn's ultra-violent, slow-moving series received mixed reviews from critics, and in a recent interview with Vulture to promote his new Netflix series Copenhagen Cowboy, the filmmaker flatly accused Amazon of burying the boundary-pushing show upon release. Refn said:
"They took all my marketing money away because they were afraid that the show would reflect badly on Amazon. They told me that directly... They were so shocked by it. I was like, 'What's so shocking?' They said, 'It's going to make us look bad.' And I said, 'But I don't think anyone's going to look at you at all.' ... Amazon released the show, but they said, 'We will bury you.' And so they did. However, you can't bury a diamond."
Indeed, the minor moral victory for Refn might be that the show is still actually talked about in cinephile circles almost four years after its release, and seems destined to live on as a challenging cult classic despite Amazon's clear desire to pretend that it doesn't exist.