Sci-Fi Storm

After the odd short season order and speculation about cancellation afterwards for Eureka, from which Syfy backed off a bit, now comes news that Syfy’s canceled plans for that 6th season – which apparently leaves the show more or less canceled.

According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s James Hibberd, Syfy issued the following statement:

After painstaking consideration, we have had to make the difficult business decision to not order a season six of Eureka. But Eureka is not over yet. There is a new holiday episode this December and 12 stellar episodes set to debut next year, marking its fifth season and six memorable years on Syfy. The 2012 episodes are some of the best we’ve seen, and will bring this great series to a satisfying end. We are very grateful to Bruce Miller and Jaime Paglia, their team of incredible writers, and an amazing cast and crew who have consistently delivered a series we continue to be very proud of. We thank the fans for their support of this show and know they will enjoy its final season in 2012.

Syfy has not yet publicly released a statement. (Update: This is now Syfy’s official statement on the matter.)

There are still the remaining episodes of the current season airing, (4 I believe), plus another holiday episode in December, and a 5th season of 12 episodes in 2012, so this is not an immediate cancellation. However, given that shooting on Season 5 wraps soon, there is no word on how the show will be ended (speculation was that the additional 6 episodes were meant to be a wrap up).

Update: Co-creator and executive producer Jaime Paglia (@jaimepaglia) tweeted a moment ago: “Heartfelt thanks to all our #Eureka fans for the incredible support. You’re the reason we do what we do. It has been a privilege…We hope to be able to give you, the characters, and #Eureka a proper send-off. We’re doing all we can to make that happen…But whatever happens, you have a season and a half of fantastic new #Eureka episodes to come through next year. It only gets better…All my thanks to our amazing cast, crew and creative team for their phenomenal work on these 76 episodes of #Eureka. You’re the best.”

Update 2: While the fan base is already aiming missiles at Syfy (again), writer/exec producer Amy Berg wrote the following on Twitter (@bergopolis): “Everyone is asking why. It’s simple, really. We are the network’s golden child in every way, except profit margins. Fact is, #Eureka is an expensive show to make. And we could not maintain the quality of our show with the cuts it would take to make us profitable for Syfy’s new parent company. Our creative execs at Syfy fought hard to keep us. Trust me, they LOVE us. We just couldn’t make the numbers work.” So it seems the new Comcast overlords are to blame for wanting a higher profit margin, NOT the people working at Syfy specifically. Eureka was apparently more expensive than even I realized, and as I’ve tried to say on a number of occasions, it has nothing to do with the voracity of the fan base, but of the size in comparison to the budget. The more expensive a show is, the bigger those ratings need to be, and you can’t compare one show’s ratings against another without comparing their budgets as well.