'Heathers' TV show cancelled again following Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
Paramount Network's remake of the cult 1988 black comedy has been rendered tasteless by a string of mass shootings over the past eight months
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Your support makes all the difference.The new 'Heathers' TV show keeps getting pulled off the air due to mass shootings.
Sunday night's episodes, the show's seventh and eighth instalments, didn't air as a mark of respect in the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting shooting, which left 11 people dead on Saturday.
Paramount Network confirmed to Deadline that it pulled the episodes. Sources told the platform the cancellation was due to a storyline that saw the show's characters taking part in active shooter training.
The reboot of the cult 1988 black comedy starring Winona Ryder, Shannen Doherty and Christian Slater was first supposed to air in March. Its release was postponed for the first time following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting of February 2017, during which a gunman killed 17 students and staff members. Executives felt it would be inappropriate to broadcast the show, which deals with dark themes such as suicide, murder and violence, a month after the killings.
A new premiere date was then believed to have been set for July. However, sources told The Hollywood Reporter that the series's debut was pushed again after the Santa Fe High School shooting, which left eight students and two teachers dead in Texas in May this year.
In June, Paramount Networks announced it had decided to scrap the show entirely, and the new Heathers was set to be shopped to other platforms.
"This is a high school show, we're blowing up the school, there are guns in the school, it's a satire and there are moments of teachers having guns. It's hitting on so many hot topics," Keith Cox, Paramount Network's president of development and production, told The Hollywood Reporter at the time. "This company can't be speaking out of both sides of its mouth, saying the youth movement is important for us and we've done all these wonderful things to support that and at the same time, we're putting on a show that we're not comfortable with."
He added: "The combination of a high school show with these very dark moments didn't feel right."
However, an edited version of the series did debut on the Viacom-owned Paramount Network after all. All 10 episodes were scheduled to air within a week between October 25 and October 29. Sunday night's episodes weren't broadcast on television but were made available via video on demand for viewers looking to catch up.
The series's final episode aired on Monday as scheduled. Heathers was originally supposed to have 10 episodes, but the ninth and 10th instalment were combined into a single one after a plot line in which the school got blown up was edited out, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Another edit involved the removing of a scene in episode five that saw a character play a video game in which he shot and killed several people in the high school's hallways.
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