Scavengers Reign may have a chance at survival despite being canceled by Max, as fans of the show may still have reason for optimism. The animated sci-fi drama will begin streaming on Netflix on May 31 in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, and New Zealand. However, the Netflix deal is not exclusive, and the episodes will also remain available on Max.
Sources told Variety that Netflix is contemplating picking up Scavengers Reign for a second season, but it won’t make a decision after Season 1 of the television show has been released. The series follows the remaining crew of an interstellar freighter ship stranded on an alien planet as they navigate a hostile world that has flourished without human interference while attempting to find their ship and missing crewmates.
“We are beyond thrilled that ‘Scavengers Reign’ will be joining the incredible animation lineup on Netflix,” said Bennett, Buckelew, Merrill, and Brooke on behalf of Green Street. “We’re immensely grateful to everyone who has watched the show already and to Netflix for giving it an opportunity to be discovered by a wider audience.”
Joe Bennett and Charles Huettner created the series based on their 2016 short Scavengers, which Green Street Pictures has adapted into a 12-episode series. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in October, Green Street Pictures’ co-founder Sean Buckelew discussed their method of dropping viewers directly into the world without much explanation.
“It was a fun challenge,” Buckelew said. “Instead of opening with the ship crashing and doing all that exposition, across the board we tried to see how little exposition [we could] give. But I think we also didn’t want it to feel like Lost so much, where you’re holding on to this puzzle box and that’s really what the show is going to be about — revealing.”
Writer James Merrill mentioned the limitations of working within animation and how far they were willing to take the stakes of their universe, saying, “In all things with the show, we didn’t want to have gratuitous violence, we didn’t want to have broad comedy, nudity. “I think in general, we wanted to be careful with our depictions of these things so that it had the most impact. Especially in the context of animation.
“There’s just so much inundation with violence that the audience is inured to it, and if you pull back a little bit, and then present it in a way that actually does have serious stakes like a lot of live-action TV drama has done in the last 20 years, it can hit an audience in a way that can make them emotional — even cry, potentially.”
He added, “I feel like it was critical for us to treat death in the show the same way we treat death in our own lives. We wanted it to be super meaningful for the characters onscreen because they’re a small crew, and each character dynamic is so meaningful because they’re so far away from home.”