After being kicked out of the NCAA, basketball coach Marvyn Korn (Stamos) gets a chance at redemption with a coaching position at an elite private school, the Westbrook School for Girls. Korn soon learns that the teens are asking for empathy and vulnerability - strange notions for this stoic coach. By learning how to connect with his players, Korn begins to grow into the person he's always wanted to be.
The series premiered in April 2021 and was renewed for a second season in September of that year. The second season started last October, a year and a half after the premiere of the first season.
The cancellation is not a big surprise as the series was not a big hit for Disney+. In addition, sports series are expensive because they are complicated and difficult to film.
The team of The Mighty Ducks (2021): Game Changers has also been benched. Viewers will not see a third season of this either. The series is a comedy-drama continuation of the 1990s films. The Mighty Ducks (2021): Game Changers is developed by film creator Steve Brill, Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa.
The series stars Lauren Graham, Emilio Estevez, Josh Duhamel, Brady Noon, Maxwell Simkins, Swayam Bhatia, Julee Cerda, Luke Islam, Bella Higginbotham, Taegen Burns, Kiefer O'Reilly, De'Jon Watts and Naveen Paddock.
Set in present-day Minnesota, the Mighty Ducks youth hockey team has grown from a meager underdog to an ultra-competitive powerhouse team. After twelve-year-old Evan Morrow (Noon) is kicked out of the Ducks irrevocably, he and his mother, Alex (Graham), and friend Nick Gaines (Simkins) set out to build their own team of misfits - to take the cutthroat, what it takes to challenge the winning culture of today's youth sports. With the help of the Ducks' original coach, Gordon Bombay (Estevez), they rediscover the joy of playing for the love of the game.
The series premiered in March 2021 and was renewed for a second season in August of that year. In November, it was announced that Estevez' option for the second season was not taken up due to creative differences and a contractual dispute. A month later, Duhamel joined the cast. The second season started last September, a year and a half after the premiere of the first season.
Peter Rice was a strong supporter of the series. But the former chairman of Disney General Entertainment Content for The Walt Disney Company was fired in June despite recently having his contract extended through 2024. The Wall Street Journal reported:
"A senior Disney official cited Mr. Rice's decision to renew two struggling series on the Disney+ streaming service - The Mighty Ducks (2021) and Big Shot (2021) - as examples of questionable deal-making. Both series cost more than $50 million dollar and neither had shown the kind of success that deserved extra seasons, this official said.
But people familiar with Mr. Rice's thinking argued that the series were renewed in part because the Covid-19 pandemic made it challenging to develop and produce new programs and that both were well reviewed.
Also, Mr Rice felt there wasn't enough stability on the platform and it was important to have some consistency so viewers wouldn't get frustrated with series coming and going, they said."
