Co-Editor-in-Chief, TV
Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter leaves Netflix series The Abandons weeks before filming wraps
EXCLUSIVE: In a shocker, Kurt Sutter is exiting Netflix's The Abandons, just three weeks before the sprawling western starring Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson wraps production in Calgary. Sutter was the executive producer/showrunner on the series, which he also created.
The Abandons executive producer/director Otto Bathurst and co-executive producer Rob Askins will oversee the remainder of filming, including reshoots, which are proceeding as planned without a new showrunner named. (Sutter and Bathurst are in the cast photo above, taken early in production in May.) I understand The Abandons is about six episodes out of its seven-episode run. Representatives for Netflix and Sutter declined to comment.
The departure is said to stem from creative differences over the direction of the large-scale production as filming wraps and it enters post-production. I hear alarms went off at Netflix when the first draft of the dense first episode, which sets the scene and introduces the large cast of main characters, came in at 1 hour and 40 minutes. Cutting that down to an hour proved impossible, so the decision was made to split the episode, written by Sutter and directed by Bathurst, in two. That required creating a cliffhanger in the middle of the episode with additional scenes on either end to wrap up the premiere and start Episode 2.
