There May Be A Problem With ‘Wednesday’ Season 2

While Netflix often likes to take their sweet time with show renewals, at this point, after six weeks of Wednesday being one of its biggest series…ever, it does seem like we are waiting a weirdly long time for the announcement of a season 2 (or 3, or 4) renewal for the show.

Now, it may be coming into focus what exactly is going on here, and it has to do with the rights to the series, which as it turns out, are not Netflix’s to fully do with as they please.

Here’s the situation:

• While Netflix is the distributor for Wednesday, the show was not made in house. Rather, it’s an MGM production.
• Back in March of 2022, Amazon and MGM closed a $8.5 million merger.

While at the time this deal was made, Amazon said they had no plans to make all MGM content exclusive to Prime Video, you may start to understand what may be going on behind the scenes here.

One of two things may be unfolding now. The most drastic potential move would be that given that Prime Video is a direct rival to Netflix, that Amazon plays hardball, and potentially yanks Wednesday season 2 from Netflix and puts it on their service instead, given that it’s one of its competitors biggest shows, and presumably, its follow-up season would be a big draw on its own platform.

Or, Netflix has to pay Amazon a huge amount of money in order to keep future Wednesday seasons on Netflix, money they will likely cough up, given what a big hit it’s been from a viewership perspective, and a pop culture phenomenon to boot.

I suppose there might be a third option, that the original MGM deal doesn’t allow for Amazon to pull the show or demand additional money, but that does seem somewhat unlikely. And one of the first two things would explain the long delay and why a seemingly obvious season 2 hasn’t been announced yet.

My money is on Netflix doing whatever it takes to secure Wednesday for themselves. Yes, it’s true that they have generally soured on shows that they do not fully own, which led to a number of cancellations in the past, but Wednesday is a unique animal and one of the biggest boosts in years for the service at a time when it really needs it. Amazon could take whatever they’re paid for the distribution rights and invest it into their own content.

But no one is privy to exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. It does seem like some versions of the above scenario, however, given the MGM issue. Hopefully we’ll hear something official soon.

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