Sources say Westworld was cancelled due to low cost-effectiveness

The philosophical science fiction American TV series "Westworld" was recently canceled, causing fans to sigh in regret. A source recently revealed the real reason for the cancellation. Westworld Season 4 has only eight episodes (the first two seasons had ten episodes), but it cost 160 million US dollars. The cost-effectiveness is obviously not as good as "House of the Dragon", the latter of which had a budget of only 125 million US dollars.

When Westworld was first created, it was seen as the successor to Game of Thrones, used to counter the vigorous offensive of the emerging streaming giant Netflix. Now that House of the Dragon has successfully taken over, Westworld seems redundant, especially with a sharp decline in ratings:

After watching the pilot episode in August 2013, former HBO production president Michael Lombardo officially ordered Westworld in November 2014. It was originally scheduled to premiere in 2015, but was later postponed to 2016 due to script issues. Producer JJA commented, "The production cost of the show is ridiculous, but this is HBO, they have always been like this. The Nolans wanted to create a blockbuster experience from the beginning, and HBO supported this idea without compromise."

The first season of Westworld cost $100 million, which was a very high production standard in 2016. Casting work began as early as 2014, attracting the interest of big-name actors including Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, and Rachel Wood. The reason was not the salary (Hopkins and Harris were only paid $175,000 per episode in the first season), but the acting challenge - the characters they played were very complex and could be killed at any time and then return with a new look.

In the first two seasons, Westworld received more than 40 Emmy nominations, leading the awards competition. Unfortunately, in the third season, the number of nominations was reduced by half. The creators, the Nolans, did plan six seasons for the show, rather than just a last-minute extension. The evidence is the multi-million dollar contract signed with Amazon, which stipulated that the Nolans could return to serve as the creators of Westworld Season 6, when the show had not yet been renewed for Season 4.