AMC+ Cancels Animated Series ‘Pantheon,’ Undoing 2-Season Order

Pantheon Maddie Katie Chang
Titmouse Inc/AMC+

Perhaps AMC should stand for Another Maddening Cancellation. As AMC Networks’ canceling spree continues, the company has nixed the animated AMC+ series Pantheon after one season, even though it had ordered two seasons and the second season had already been produced.

In another blow to fans, the first season of Pantheon has been removed from the AMC+ library, according to Deadline, which first reported the cancellation news.

Created by Craig Silverstein and based on short stories by award-winning author Ken Liu, Pantheon“explore[d] the theme of technology through the lens of family, focusing on both the people whose brains have been digitally uploaded and the loved ones they’ve left behind,” AMC Networks said in an August 2022 press release. “Maddie [Katie Chang], a bullied teen, receives help from someone online. It turns out that the person is her deceased father, David [Daniel Dae Kim]. His consciousness has been uploaded to the cloud after an experimental brain scan. Turns out, he’s not the only one.”

The sci-fi drama also featured the voices of Paul Dano, Rosemarie DeWitt, Aaron Eckhart, and Taylor Schilling.

As part of a cost-cutting tax write-down of around $400 million, AMC Networks has also called off the second seasons of the AMC drama 61st Street and the AMC+ sci-fi series Moonhaven and scrapped the in-development shows Demascus and Invitation to a Bonfire.

The “programming assessments” of the tax write-down “pertain to a broad mix of owned and licensed content, including legacy television series and films that will no longer be in active rotation on the Company’s linear or digital platforms,” AMC Networks said in an SEC filing in December.

Deadline notes a “small chance” that AMC Studios could find another streaming home or network for Pantheon Season 2, as the production division hopes to do with more of its canceled series.