Apple TV+ drama Shantaram has been cancelled by the streamer after one season, according to a recent report by Deadline. The drama, starring and produced by Charlie Hunnam, will conclude with tonight’s Season 1 finale.
The series was unable to gain the popularity of Apple TV’s other hit series. The show will conclude with its final episode streaming tonight, Friday 16th. Whilst Hunnam has yet to comment on the news, in a previous interview with Collider, the actor and producer believed the series was meant for a longer run. “Coming from television when I read the book, I was immediately thinking about it long-form, thinking you tell a story over 30, 40, or 50 hours,” Hunnam said in October.
The cancellation comes after a long struggle to get Gregory David Robert’s novel adapted for the screen. Prior to being green-lighted by Apple TV+, multiple attempts to turn Robert’s novel into a movie franchise had been unsuccessful, including Johhny Depp’s campaign to adapt the novel. When Hunnam first read the novel seven years earlier and “fell madly in love with it,” the rights were already owned by Warner Bros. Both he and Eric Warren Singer, who gave Hunnam the book, spent years trying to secure the rights before eventually trying to convince those who had them to hire them. “In the moments where I lost faith in this actually happening, and there were a few of those moments, I considered some other TV opportunities because I was actually very eager to get back to TV… Thankfully, Apple was game for it,” Hunnam said, revealing that Shantaram was the series he wanted to “do the most” after his role as Jackson ‘Jax’ Teller on Sons of Anarchy.
The pandemic also played havoc on the series’ release. Only two episodes of the series were shot in late February 2020 before COVID-19 put a pause on filming. Production did not resume for the last ten episodes until May 2021, mainly due to filming taking place in multiple countries.
Based on Robert’s 700-plus page novel, Shantaram, the series focuses on escaped Australian criminal, Lin Ford (Hunnam). Set during the 1980s, Ford seeks to reinvent himself as a doctor in the slums of Bombay. Unfortunately, he finds himself both entangled with a local mafia and fighting invading Russian troops in Afghanistan—which he employs his counterfeiting and gun-running skills to help him—all whilst battling his own attraction to a woman by the name of Karla (Antonia Desplat).
“It’s just an incredible odyssey of adventure, love, betrayal, criminality, gods, and everything in between,” Hunnam said of the series, which also stars Shubham Saraf, Elektra Kilbey, Fayssal Bazzi, Luke Pasqualino, Alyy Khan, Sujaya Dasgupta, Vincent Perez, David Field, Alexander Siddig, Gabrielle Scharnitzky, Elham Ehsas, Rachel Kamath, Matthew Joseph, and Shiv Palekar. The series was written and executive produced by Steve Lightfoot, with Bharat Nalluri on board as director and executive producer, and Andrea Barron, Nicole Clemens, Steve Golin, Justin Kurzzel, and Singer as executive producers.
The season finale of Shantaram airs December 16, 2022 on Apple TV+. In the meantime, check out the official trailer below:
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