The Timeless movie timeline — are books, comics another option?

If you missed the super-sad news from earlier today, we’ll take a moment here to deliver it: Timeless is not coming back to television as a series — at least for the time being. Earlier today, series boss Shawn Ryan confirmed that the team at Sony Pictures TV had spoken to a number of different outlets and there was no interest in picking up the show.

Since earlier, there are a few more details that have come in regarding why other networks / streaming outlets have passed — unsurprisingly, much of it comes down to cost. An average episode of Timeless costs around $4 million to make, and that’s a considerable price tag for an hour of television. That means that the second season cost about $40 million, and for that price you need to get a good return on your investment. Even if Timeless was profitable for a new home, they may think that a new property could be both more affordable and more lucrative — they may just think that their own original content has a higher ceiling and they don’t have to split the profits with an outside studio.

Beyond all of this, Ryan also made it clear that he will wait out the rest of the week to see if a movie is ordered at NBC before discussing anything else in terms of what the future of this story would be.

If we were to contribute our two cents, we would say that, regardless of if a movie happens, books may be the best future for Timeless regardless — whether they be novels or comics, it really doesn’t matter. This is a show about a historian-turned time-traveler, and with the affluent and well-educated audience Timeless has, we easily foresee viewers being eager to pick up some stories that are not beholden to a budget at all. We know that comics have worked well for some other canceled shows, including Firefly, and it could also work out here.

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