ABC Domestic Television Targeted by Angry Legend of the Seeker Fans
SyFy has decided to cling to the noisome Merlin, which is about as pathetic an excuse for a fantasy genre TV show as has come along this century. Meanwhile, ABC Domestic Television has been unable to find a new distributor for Legend of the Seeker, the cult favorite dreamed up by Sam Raimi (”Spiderman”, “Spartacus: Blood and Sand”) and Rob Tapert (”Hercules”, “Xena”).
Based on Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth books, Legend of the Seeker has been filmed in New Zealand (where Hercules and Xena were produced). Who knows where Merlin is filmed — a backlot at the city dump, maybe?
The hue and cry that went up across the Internet when ABC Domestic Television announced — wait, they haven’t announced anything, yet. Here’s the rub: fans of Legend of the Seeker heard only this week through third parties that ABC had decided to stop producing the show. One of the stars and producers vaguely confirmed the cancellation without actually using the “C” word.
Naturally, fans of the show are confused: is it cancelled or not? Official word is supposedly still weeks away. But the Seeker fan community is not waiting for any official announcement. They’ve launched a crusade to hammer SyFy to pick up the show and ABC to keep it in production no matter what. And their resources are plentiful. They’ve already brainstormed dozens of ideas in one Seeker fan forum and a dedicated Save The Seeker blog has been set up over at Wordpress.
A previous online Save the Seeker petition has been adopted by the new legions of protesters, who have tracked down the names and email addresses of dozens of executives at Disney and ABC (which is owned by Disney). The SyFy representative on Twitter complained that he was taking the brunt of the assault there, even though Seeker had performed poorly in a test marathon SyFy broadcast earlier in the season (fans complained they did not know about the marathon).
Although things may be looking bleak for the cast and crew of Legend of the Seeker, this is probably not the week for one to realize a lifelong dream of becoming an executive at Disney or ABC Television. It might be best to let the storm die down, first. And good luck with that, Disney/ABC.
