Kung Fu Cancelled at The CW
Kung Fu‘s crime-fighting heroine is packing it up for good.
The CW has cancelled the supernatural martial arts series after three seasons, TVLine has learned. The Season 3 finale — which is now the series finale — aired on Wednesday, March 8. (The network also axed on Thursday the Supernatural prequel The Winchesters.)
“As we reimagine the new CW, we had to make some tough programming decisions,” The CW said in a statement. “We thank our partners at Warner Bros. and the casts and creative teams of Kung Fu and The Winchesters for all their hard work, creativity and dedication.”
Kung Fu this season averaged 792,000 total viewers and a 0.1 rating (with Live+7 playback), down 14% in audience but steady in the demo vs. its Season 2 numbers. Out of the 14 dramas that The CW aired this TV season, it ranks No. 7 in audience and is in an eight-way tie for the lowest demo rating.
The series centered on Nicky Shen, a Chinese American woman who decided to drop out of college following a quarter-life crisis. After a life-altering journey to an isolated monastery in China, she returned home to find the town rife with corruption and crime. Using her martial arts skills and Shaolin values, she protected her community and brought criminals to justice.
The show starred Olivia Liang (Legacies) as Nicky Shen, Eddie Liu as Henry, Jon Prasida as Nicky’s brother Ryan, Shannon Dang as Nicky’s tech-savvy older sister Althea, Yvonne Chapman as Zhilan, Gavin Stenhouse as Nicky’s ex-boyfriend Evan and Vanessa Kai as Pei-Ling.
Additional cast included Tzi Ma as Nicky’s father Jin, Kheng Hua Tan as Nicky’s mother Mei-Li, Tony Chung as Althea’s husband Dennis and JB Tadena as Sebastian.
Kung Fu was created by Christina M. Kim who served as showrunner and executive producer alongside co-showrunner Robert Berens (Supernatural).
Among the broadcast shows still on the bubble are The CW’s All American: Homecoming, Gotham Knights and Superman & Lois. Check out TVLine’s Renewal Scorecard for the latest intel on those series and many others
How are you feeling about Kung Fu’s cancellation? Sound off below.
le sigh
At least it Kung Fu had an open ended finale.
You’re at least they had a chance to say good bye and sign off in their own way
And so it continues. Keep the crap and cancel the good shows.
You assholes don’t know what the hell your doing. Kung Fu and the Winchesters were excellent drama’s; wow throw the good shows out and keep the carpet ( THE NEW CW) I don’t think so 😭😭😔. The Winchesters was cool; spin off from Supernatural . STOP CANCELLING good shows!!!
They obviously don’t care about quality, only maximizing profit by lowering cost. Reality tv, cheap imports, ect… is a strategy that doesn’t care if it loses the entire existing consumer base (which it very well might,) because it wants to bring in new consumers. The CW is well and truly dying and soon it will be dead.
How could WBD be so tone and deaf in selling an entire network of scripted content to a bunch of good for nothing execs that are the definition of lazy?
How likely is it anyway that Nexstar will be able to bring in these so called “new consumers” by losing the already existing consumer base? Because all I can think of is that absolutely no one will care of their cheap programming at all.
I personally am not a reality tv guy. I don’t really understand the people who watch the bachelor or real housewives or any of that stuff. But there is a market for it. Likewise I am not a fan of any of the Canadian shows the CW has picked up (but I have been a fan of Canadian shows like Lost Girl,) but there is a market for it. So if they lose me but gain someone else that is replacing the current consumer with a new consumer. You can say it will fail on a macro level, but they are willing to bet on it. Warner and CBS owned it together and they were not making enough money from the CW. Nexstar was a way to get out of the CW and put there assets elsewhere. It sucks for me and other fans of the CW, but it is a business move at the end of the day.
Has this strategy ever really worked though? This strategy is pretty much what has turned basic cable into a ghost town. Nobody really watches TNT, TBS, USA etc. any more. Wouldn’t a better strategy be to fight to hang on to the existing consumer base while expanding it even more? Why settle for replacing one viewer with another when you could get both of them? Basic cable wouldn’t be dying if it made more of an effort to actually attract the viewers it says it wants. The problem has always been that it’s the cheapest strategy which makes it the preferred strategy of the executives. That doesn’t make is the best strategy.
Can you imagine coming out of Oscar season and seeing all the acclaim that EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE received and not capitalizing on the small screen version of Asian representation and cancelling this show while not developing it to it’s full potential?
But keep acquiring content from Canada cause it’s cheaper. Great plan, The CW!
Heck, just check out the optics. Cancelling Kung Fu during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
I had the same thought. And no offense to Lea Thompson or Chad Michael Murray, but the majority of their picks have been heavily white – though they do have Run the Burbs for summer at least. But it’s a huge loss to have this show go off the air, as well as to not find a new home for it. :(
Oy, VALID point.
No one wants what the CW is changing into. Hope this gets picked up by another network.
No one wants those penny pinchers dollar-store execs of Nexstar running The CW. Worst purchase ever selling this to these buffons.
It sounds like that option was explored unsuccessfully (per Deadline) :( :( :(
No one else wants this show either. Too bad.
Given how they ended the show, I think they figured it would be cancelled. Everyone got happy ending. I did not like the storyline as much this season but it was still a lot of fun.
It was a a little above average in season 1, very good in season 2, and quality slide hard in season 3. The finale clearly was intended as a series finale which leads to me believe the writing was even more on the wall behind the scenes than in public. With a bigger budget and a better network I think this show could have been much bigger than the demo showed. I doubt it gets saved, but depending on streaming numbers it might be revived. Other posts talk about Asian representation and I agree a mostly Asian cast is a very good thing given lack of representation elsewhere. That said it needs to be profitable and the CW in general hasn’t been. A strong showing in streaming is the way to prove profitability and in 2-3 years if the cast isn’t overly committed I could see a reunion movie to set up a full revival.
Cancel them all. we do not need network TV anymore. Thank You
Remember that Hollywood Reporter article from October of last year?
“Perry Sook and Dennis Miller are said to be fans of such broad CW fare as Jared Padalecki’s Walker franchise, Greg Berlanti’s Superman & Lois and the family-focused Kung Fu.”
Frocking hypocrites!
Also this part too.
“They either have a beautiful master plan that they’re going to unveil or no idea what the f— they’re doing,” sums up one source with business at The CW.”
Guess we finally know what it is!
May of been a fan but if wb the company getting the backend, won’t get the cost down, and the ratings don’t justify it why bother, all American will get you mon, tue walker, reality wed be nice to have they should pickup 2 more, wonder if zoro is still optioned, if so all American homecoming and zorro, are my guesses
My last cw show. I’ll miss it but Atleast it has an okay finale.
I liked this show, but the finale did feel like a series finale. It’s just unfortunate that it was cancelled, since it was one of the few shows about an Asian American family.
I so enjoyed Kung Fu and I am sad that its been cancelled. I liked the cast and the story. I’ll miss it.
I would call Nicky’s home of San Francisco a “town.” LOL. Well I suppose probably meant Chinatown.
I liked this show and glad they had a proper ending.
I so enjoyed Kung Fu and I am sad that its been cancelled. I liked the cast and the story. I’ll miss it a lot.
It was a fun show — glad we had it for three years. Pass one of those Harmony dumplings please.
We knew it was coming but I still feel gutted. After all of these cancellations (with more to come), there is next to nothing to watch on cable television.
And it’s not coming back if someone brings that up. WB tried to shop it, but no takers.
It won’t be Gonzalo, that’s for sure.
Reimagined = new Penny pitching network. lol
What a shame. Kung Fu was the only primarily Asian cast on broadcast TV. It and Superman and Lois are the only shows worth watching on the CW. Good luck with the low viewership numbers Nexstar.
CW is canceling all there shows that I watch I like all the shows on your channel. Y’all keep canceling Y’all are not going to have any shows to watch.
Good TV series are hard to come by because they keep canceling them.
Kung Fu was the CW show I most wanted to be renewed. Very unhappy about this announcement.
Me too. At least you can get the DVDs if you’re interested. The best representation of Asians around.
Damn it…. Another good scripted action series potentially gone? I only just watched it in December last year as well.
What the hell is going on? First CBS screw up with nearly cancelling swat and now this? CW really messed up. Hoping another rescue attempt is made I was really getting into it. To hell with scripted reality TV that is -crap- rescue Kung Fu instead!
The CW USED to so cool because of the great Scify like Legacies and Supernatural. We all know that the almighty $ controls what was and what will be. They don’t care about us only the ratings.