Fox Cancels Hieroglyph Before It Airs

Fox's anticipated midseason drama Hieroglyph has been cancelled. The series, which was among the new dramas included in Fox's 2014-2015 lineup, was supposed to air at some point next year, but Fox has apparently decided to pull the plug on the project well in advance of its planned debut.

Created by Travis Beacham (with Being Human's Anna Fricke among the executive producers), Hieroglyph was described as an "exciting action-adventure series" set in ancient Egypt, "a time of magic, Pharaohs, gods and thieves." Among the stars of the series were Maxx Brown, Caroline Ford, Reece Ritche, Condola Rashad, Kelsey Chow, Antony Bunsee and John Rhys Davies.

The series was among the dramas Fox presented during the Upfront last May. Tonight, EW reports that Fox shut down Hieroglyph and notified the show's writers on Monday that they wouldn't be moving forward with the drama after all. EW notes that this decision comes following the exit of programming chief Kevin Reilly, who greenlit the series. That makes us wonder if Hieroglyph will be the only series to be un-ordered to series, or if this is simply a matter of problems with this particular show. EW says their source says "the series wasn’t creatively coming together the way executives had hoped."

Here's the trailer that was released to preview the series...

With its leanings toward the fantasy genre, Hieroglyph certainly would have been an ambitious project for Fox, or any broadcast network for that matter. But it would have been interesting to see how the subject matter was handled on network television, as opposed to basic or premium cable, especially when factoring in the implied racy content and violence teased in the above trailer.

Alas, Hieroglyph will go the way of Dane Cook's NBC comedy Next Caller and Fox's drama Us & Them, both of which are on the list of shows cancelled before they made it to air. See also CBS' Friend Me. Sometimes shows manage to make it beyond the pilot stage, but don't actually air -- or when they do air, it's during an off-peak time of year and we barely notice, unfortunately. In the case of Hieroglyph, it seems Fox has decided not to invest anything further int this particular drama.

Fox still has a number of other TV series lined up for Midseason 2015, including Hart Hanson's new series starring Rainn Wilson, Backstrom, drama series Empire, starring Terrence Howard, and the comedy The Last Man on Earth from Phil Lord & Chris Miller, starring Will Forte.

Kelly West
Assistant Managing Editor

Kelly joined CinemaBlend as a freelance TV news writer in 2006 and went on to serve as the site’s TV Editor before moving over to other roles on the site. At present, she’s an Assistant Managing Editor who spends much of her time brainstorming and editing feature content on the site. She an expert in all things Harry Potter, books from a variety of genres (sci-fi, mystery, horror, YA, drama, romance -- anything with a great story and interesting characters.), watching Big Brother, frequently rewatching The Office, listening to Taylor Swift, and playing The Sims.