Cruel Intentions has been canceled after one season on Prime Video, but I’m not surprised by its cruel fate grace.morris@futurenet.com (Grace Morris) | usagoldmines.com

• The Prime Video series Cruel Intentions has been canceled after one season.
• Cruel Intentions is Prime Video’s TV remake of the 1999 cult classic movie.
• The series received critical reviews when it was released in November 2024.

The Cruel Intentions TV show has been canceled by Prime Video after one season, and I can’t help but think its ending isn’t so cruel after all.

Prime Video’s TV remake of the 1999 steamy teen drama movie Cruel Intentions premiered in November 2024. Although it became Prime Video’s second most-watched show at the time, Cruel Intentions wasn’t met with kindness and received a 24% Rotten Tomatoes score from the critics.

While Cruel Intentions isn’t one of the best Prime Video shows, it was well-received by the audience, who gave it an impressive 81% on Rotten Tomatoes. But despite this, the show has ended up on Prime Video’s scrap heap alongside the hit crime comedy series The Sticky.

In Cruel Intentions, step-siblings Caroline (Sara Catherine Hook) and Lucien Belmont (Zac Burgess) will do anything to stay on top of the social hierarchy at the elite Manchester College. After a hazing scandal, they plot to seduce Annie Grover (Savannah Lee Smith), the daughter of the Vice President of the United States, to maintain their power and reputation.

Prime Video hasn’t officially confirmed why Cruel Intentions was axed, but low viewing figures are usually to blame for cancelations, with Variety also revealing that it “failed to make an appearance on the Nielsen Top 10 Streaming charts.”

A kind outcome for a cruel TV remake

When the Cruel Intentions trailer was released in October 2024, TechRadar’s Tom Power wasn’t convinced that it would be any better than its film namesake, writing: “Heck, if Amazon’s 2021 TV adaptation of another cult classic 1990s young adult movie in I Know What You Did Last Summer is anything to go by – it was a massive flop, for those wondering – the chances are that Cruel Intentions will, well, suffer a similarly cruel fate.”

Adapting an iconic blockbuster into a TV series was always going to be a tricky business and it’s often rare to see the remake do as well if not better than its source material. Unfortunately this was the case for Cruel Intentions, so while the show has come to a rather mean end, I think this may have been the kindest outcome for the drama series.

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