Netflix spent $120M on Baz Luhrmann's The Get Down — it lasted one season

The Get Down was Baz Luhrmann's epic of the birth of hip-hop in the late-1970s Bronx — Netflix's bet that a film-scale director could anchor its prestige slate. The first season cost approximately $120M, the most expensive television production of its era; after production delays and a retool, it arrived split in two — six episodes in August 2016, five more in April 2017 — twelve in all.

On May 24, 2017, Netflix canceled the series after one season. Luhrmann said the final sticking point was an exclusivity standoff between Netflix and Sony over his time: 'I make movies,' he wrote in his farewell post. Two years later, when Netflix tightened its greenlight discipline around cost-per-viewer, The Get Down's $120M was named internally as one of the misses — alongside Marco Polo — that changed how the platform bought shows.