‘Nancy Drew’ Spinoff ‘Tom Swift’ Canceled at The CW After One Season
The CW’s wave of series cancellations is continuing into the summer.
The network has pulled the plug on its Nancy Drew spinoff Tom Swift after a single season. The CBS Studios series, which premiered on May 31, will play out the remainder of its order but won’t return to the broadcast network.
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Tom Swift is the 11th series The CW has canceled in the 2021-22 season, the most it has cut in a decade. The surge in cancellations comes as the network’s owners, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global, are looking to sell the Mark Pedowitz-led broadcaster; local TV giant Nexstar, which owns a number of CW affiliates, is the leading candidate and, per a Wall Street Journal report this week, will take a 75 percent stake in the network, with WBD and Paramount retaining 12.5 percent each.
As for Tom Swift, viewers have not taken to the series over its first month on air. Airing behind Superman & Lois on Tuesdays, it has averaged just 535,000 viewers with a week of delayed viewing, ranking near the bottom of The CW’s scripted roster for the season. Sources say it was also the least watched CW original on the network’s free streaming platform.
The title character, played by Tian Richards, was introduced in a Nancy Drew episode late in the 2020-21 season, but the series didn’t debut until more than a year after that. Tom is a billionaire inventor thrust into a world of conspiracy and unexplained phenomena after the death of his father. The cast also includes Ashleigh Murray, Marquise Vilson, April Parker-Jones, Albert Mwangi and LeVar Burton.
CBS Studios and Fake Empire produce the series. Nancy Drew’s Melinda Hsu Taylor and Noga Landau created the series with Cameron Johnson (Empire); all three executive produce along with Fake Empire’s Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage and Lis Rowinski.
Deadline first reported the cancellation.
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