This year has been a bit of a wild ride for actor Adam DeVine as his career has seen setbacks and advances alike, and passion projects have been discarded in the process. For a while, it looked like the renewal of the Peacock original series Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin would be an advance, but recent news has seen Season 2 going from a “renewed” to “unrenewed” status. The story behind why is as frustrating, and as predictable, as you’d expect.
Pitch Perfect: Bumper In Berlin’s Wild Ride From Renewal To Cancellation
At the beginning of the year, Adam DeVine found himself on a professional roller coaster of emotions. Around the same time the Workaholics movie was canceled at Paramount+, the news came down that his Peacock series Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin was renewed for Season 2. It was a classic case of taking the good with the bad, and DeVine was still in business.
Alas, that leads us to this most horrible update, as Deadline reported that the streaming expansion of the Universal musical-comedy hit has been rescinded. The write-up bearing the bad news specifies that while this chapter has come to an end, the studio is still interested in keeping Pitch Perfect alive in its stable of IP. That still doesn’t help the fact that Bumper in Berlin has become the latest victim of the trend known as the “unrenewal.”
How Bumper In Berlin Became The Latest Casualty Of “Unrenewal”
Included as the cause of death in the news pertaining to Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin was, unsurprisingly, the twin strike actions of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA. With the work stoppage currently putting productions on hold, schedules and budgets are being affected in such a way that projects previously approved are now dropping off.
Amazon Studios canceled two shows under the same circumstances, leading to The Peripheral and A League of Their Own’s second seasons being jettisoned. In a fitting comment during his interview with our own Riley Utley, Pitch Perfect star Utkarsh Ambudkar invoked the strikes as an obstacle for his potential return to that world, and the series about Bumper. Sadly, that prediction has now become even more prescient, thanks to Peacock's recent decision.
Fate has been pretty fickle with the world of streaming originals, but that’s not to say that there isn’t a slim hope of retraction. One truly can't predict where the axe will swing next, especially with the October 1st deadline to save the 2023-2024 TV season looming ever clearly.
While the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are being waged in the name of fair pay and better working conditions, it seems to be an unfortunate reality that the unrenewal bug just might be all the more contagious as time goes on. But perhaps there's hope in the one place that's always faithful: the fans.
Maybe if enough Pitch Perfect loyalists with a Peacock subscription rally around the single season of Bumper in Berlin, the numbers will convince the decision-makers to reverse that cancellation once the strikes conclude. It’s not much, but this seems like the best hope for undoing what has already been undone.
