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Credit: Disney/Rolling Stones, edited by ITMThe Walt Disney Company has come under fire for cutting back hard on new, original, and even existing content to try to make CEO Bob Iger’s financial promises possible, and now it’s affecting the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World: the Rolling Stones.
Until recently, a narrative TV series about the “glory years” of the Rolling Stones was in development at FX, the cable channel owned by Disney. However, as part of widespread content cancelations and shelving, the series has been abruptly canceled, at least as far as FX goes (per Deadline).
The Rolling Stones series was to be spearheaded by Left Bank Pictures, the company behind the immensely successful Netflix series The Crown, but CEO Andy Harries says that the show is no longer happening at FX and that it was a direct casualty of Disney’s financial woes.
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According to Andy Harries, “It’s not in with FX [anymore], unfortunately…It did take a tumble out because of the cutbacks at Disney. It was just too expensive and too ambitious for the immediate agenda.”
Harries continued, “[FX Networks Chairman] John Landgraf was really effusive about the scripts and ambition for the show, but he just didn’t feel that he was going to be able to get it greenlit in the next two years.”
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In recent years, it has become increasingly common for TV series in development at one network or streaming service to be purchased by another or licensed out. While most entertainment media once focused on being the exclusive home for a certain project, it appears that is a thing of the past.
Although little is known of the former FX Rolling Stones project, it is said to focus on the early years of the band to their mid-1970s heydey, when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards led the band to critical and commercial triumphs like Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street. It is probably safe to assume (given the involvement of Left Bank Productions) that it would have approached historical events with the same fictionalized lens as The Crown, as controversial as that show could sometimes be.
Inside the Magic reached out to Disney and Left Bank Productions for comment, but has not heard back by the time of publishing.
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