Prime Video has officially pulled the plug on Cruel Intentions, cancelling the drama series after just one season.
While Amazon does not typically release detailed viewership data for its original content, Cruel Intentions struggled to make an impact. It failed to break into Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming rankings and landed poorly with critics, holding a 24% rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of cancellation.
The cancellation marks the latest setback in a franchise that has struggled to secure a lasting presence on the small screen. The Prime Video series itself had a long development period, initially set up at IMDb TV (later rebranded as Freevee) back in 2021 before landing a formal series order at Prime Video in late 2023.
Debuting on Prime Video in November 2024, the series was an updated television adaptation of the 1999 cult film of the same name. That film, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, and Reese Witherspoon, was itself a modernised retelling of the 18th-century French novel Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.
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Set in the competitive world of Manchester College, a fictional university located just outside Washington, D.C., the show followed step-siblings Caroline Merteuil and Lucien Belmont as they schemed to climb their way to the top of the college’s ruthless social hierarchy. Themes of manipulation, seduction, and betrayal—familiar hallmarks of the Cruel Intentions franchise—were once again at the centre of the story.
The series starred Sarah Catherine Hook and Zac Burgess in the lead roles, alongside Savannah Lee Smith, Sara Silva, John Harlan Kim, Khobe Clarke, Sean Patrick Thomas, and Brooke Lena Johnson.
Behind the scenes, the series was overseen by co-showrunners and executive producers Sara Goodman and Phoebe Fisher. Also attached as executive producers were Neal H. Moritz and Roger Kumble, with Moritz having produced the original film and Kumble serving as its writer and director. Sony Pictures Television, Amazon MGM Studios, and Original Film produced the show.
This is not the first time a small-screen version of Cruel Intentions has faltered. A 2016 NBC pilot, which had Sarah Michelle Gellar reprising her role as Kathryn Merteuil, never made it to series. Earlier, Fox developed a prequel series that was scrapped before broadcast; footage from that production was repurposed into the direct-to-video release Cruel Intentions 2. A third direct-to-video sequel followed in 2004.
Variety was the first to report the news on the cancellation.
