First Kill is the latest Netflix series to face the chop. The LGBTQ star-crossed romance about a vampire and a monster hunter was canceled by the streamer despite landing in its top 10 upon release. Showrunner Felicia D. Henderson has addressed the axing, explaining it was all down to the completion rate.
"When I got the call to tell me they weren’t renewing the show because the completion rate wasn’t high enough, of course, I was very disappointed," Henderson told The Daily Beast. "What showrunner wouldn’t be? I’d been told a couple of weeks ago that they were hoping completion would get higher. I guess it didn’t."
Netflix measures the completion rate as viewers who watch 90 per cent of a film or season of a series. The streamer doesn’t release the data for this, but it is thought to heavily factor into whether they will renew a show or commission a sequel. Therefore, despite First Kill being watched for almost 50 million hours in its first week, it didn’t rank highly enough to get a renewal.
Henderson also explained there may have been an issue with Netflix's marketing of the show as simply a lesbian vampire story. While she thought the "initial marketing was beautiful", the showrunner explained she hoped the later promotion would have focused on the nuances of the show.
"I think I expected that to be the beginning," she said. "And that the other equally compelling and important elements of the show – monsters vs. monster hunters, the battle between two powerful matriarchs, etc. – would eventually be promoted, and that didn’t happen."
However, despite the cancelation, the showrunner credited Netflix for giving the series a shot. "They licensed the IP, paid for a pilot script, and gave it a healthy production budget," she said.
