Several Animals Were Harmed in the Making of This Motion Picture

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/14/hbo-cancels-luck-after-horse-deaths/?hpt=hp_t3

That's some bad luck.

 

Ratings were terrible; now they're using horse deaths as the excuse they were looking for.

 

Wonder why they were filming Season 2 then.

 

Three in two seasons is pretty nasty, TV, although I don't necessarily dispute your assertion.

 

And they died before they could be legally sold for meat. Shit.

 

I was bummed to hear this. Really good show. When you have a horse dying for every two episodes you shoot, it's hard to justify keeping it going.

I'd be curious to see how many of these were tied to the production, and how many were just shit luck from working with fragile animals. Horse deaths are not exactly uncommon in the racing industry. Fatality number three was a case of a horse rearing up, falling backwards and hitting its head.

 

HBO's known for its vanity projects.

From Deadline Hollywood Daily:

After drawing a modest 1.1 million viewers for each of the pilot episode’s two premiere airings, in December and then again in January, Luck has slipped in the ratings, drawing 686,000 viewers for its most recent first-run episode.

Each epi had a $2+Million budget.

 

I don't know about the first two deaths but the third was just bad luck.

My sister works with horses. Accidents aren't uncommon and freak things happen.

Heck, one of hers was born with a heart murmur. It's going to drop dead one day and all it does is eat. She's scared to even break it

 

I would like to know the specifics of the two racing-related accidents last year.

 

One thing that has struck me about the show -- the racing footage is spectacularly shot. I wondered how you could shoot that close to the animals without having the horses freak out. The answer might be, you can't.

 

Horse deaths happen every day.

http://tuesdayshorse.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/ap-survey-finds-5000-horse-deaths-since-03/

 

Some of the cable series have had to guarantee a second season to lure certain actors to projects.