Despite best intentions, Cruel Intentions canceled after one season

Some liaisons are too dangerous for streaming. Prime Video has canceled its Cruel Intentions series. 

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  March 10, 2025 | 9:16pm
Credit: Jasper Savage (Prime Video)
TV News Cruel Intentions
Despite best intentions, Cruel Intentions canceled after one season

Prime Video’s latest attempt at courting the horny stepsibling contingent of its streaming audience has gone belly up. Cruel Intentions, an adaptation of the 1999 teen drama starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon, and Selma Blair, has been canceled after a single eight-episode season on Prime. The show, which, like the film, was a modern retelling of Dangerous Liaisons, followed the whims of a bossy yet enterprising sorority sister (Sarah Cathrine Hook) who strikes a deal with her stepbrother (Zac Burgess) to seduce the Vice President’s daughter so that they can stay in their sorority house. It was like Animal House meets Flowers In The Attic, and now it’s nothing.

The show took roughly 25 years to make it to television. Following the movie’s release, director Roger Kumble shot a pilot for a sequel series starring Gellar, reprising her role as the seductive Kathryn Merteuil, now sober but in another weird game of seduction, this time with her step-nephew. Old habits die hard, and so did the pilot, to Gellar’s relief. Over the next few years, producer Neal H. Moritz churned out two direct-to-video sequels, the first directed by Kumble. Television circled back to Cruel Intentions in 2015, and it began another nine-year journey to make it to Prime Video, which released the show last November.

Unfortunately, Cruel Intentions was unsuccessful with critics and audiences. Writing for The A.V. Club, Kelly Martinez raved the show wasn’t a “total waste of time,” which isn’t bad for a story that has been floating around since 1792. Still, “not a total waste of time” isn’t exactly a good way to sell a scintillating show about horny stepsiblings seducing the Vice President’s daughter for sorority purposes.

[via Variety]

 
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