Prime Video
Prime Video cancelled the drama series after a season and officially pulled out the plug with cruel intentions.
Amazon usually doesn’t release detailed viewer data for the original content, but cruel intent has struggled to affect it. Failing to break into Nielsen’s top 10 streaming rankings, it landed poorly in critics, retaining a 24% rating on rotten tomatoes upon cancellation.
Cancellation marks the latest setback for a franchise that struggled to ensure a lasting presence on a small screen. The Prime Video series itself had a long development period, originally set on IMDB TV (later rebranded as Freevee) before it began official series orders with Prime Video in late 2021.
The series, which debuted on Prime Video in November 2024, was an updated television adaptation of a 1999 cult film of the same name. Starring Sarah Michel Geller, Ryan Phillip and Reese Witherspoon, the film was in itself a modernized narration of the dangerous liaison of an 18th-century French novel by Pierre Coderros de Lacrosse.
Set in the competitive world of Manchester University, a fictional university located just outside Washington, DC, the show followed brothers Caroline Meltale and Lucian Belmont, whom he planned to climb to the top of the college’s ruthless social hierarchy. Themes of manipulation, seduction, and betrayal – the familiar features of the franchise of cruel intentions were once again at the heart of the story.
The series starred Sarah Katherine Hook and Zach Burgess in the lead roles, along with Savannah Lee Smith, Sarah Silva, John Harlan Kim, Cobe Clark, Sean Patrick Thomas and Brook Lena Johnson.
Behind the scenes, the series was directed by co-runners and executive producers Sarah Goodman and Phoebe Fisher. Also attached to executive producers were Neil H. Moritz and Roger Kumble, who produced the original films and authored and directed Kumble. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon MGM Studios and Original Film produced the show.
This is not the first time the cruel intentional small screen version has faded. The 2016 NBC pilot was not able to reach the series by Sarah Michel Guerard, who changed her role as Kathryn Mertewile. Previously, Fox developed a prequel series that was discarded before it aired. The footage from that production was reused in the cruel intentions 2 released from the video. 2.
Variety was the first to report news about cancellations.
