CW's 'Beauty and the Beast' Cancelled, Ends with Season 4 in 2016
Those who loyally follow CW's "Beauty and the Beast" will need to brace themselves for the sad news—the show is going to end. According to IGN, CW has announced on Tuesday that the upcoming fourth season of the romance-tinged procedural show will be the last one, which means 2016 will be its last year.
Created by Sherri Cooper-Landsman and Jennifer Levin, the show is slightly similar to an earlier version - Ron Koslow's 1987 CBS series. In the 2012 version, Kristin Kreuk and Jay Ryan play the lead roles, with the former playing as NYPD detective Catherine Chandler/Beauty and the latter as Dr. Vincent Keller/Beast. Together they created a connection not only in trying to investigate the murder of Catherine's mother but also a romantic one that eventually led to marriage.
As noted in Philly.com, the show, led by showrunner Brad Kern, was never really a good performer in terms of ratings. It scores an average rating of 0.6 in 18-49 and garnered a total of 1.6 million viewers in "live plus same-day" for its premiere season in the years 2012 and 2013.
The third season, which premiered in June, was even placed in jeopardy as it was moved in summer because the network's fall lineup got jam-packed. The move of the 13-episode order resulted to poor numbers averaging only 880,000 viewers and got a 0.2 rating in the 18-49 demo.
Some were actually surprised that the show got renewed for the fourth installment. The announcement of the renewal of the series for the fourth installment was even done four months in advance of its third-season debut.
At the moment, the show is scheduled to wrap up production next month. There's no date yet as to when the 13-episode season four will premiere but fans can expect it around either midseason or in the summer. As said in The Hollywood Reporter, CW president Mark Pedowitz liked "Beauty and the Beast" as a summer series.
