In case you forgot or were somehow unaware, the male-centric cable network Spike officially rebranded into Paramount Network in 2018. At the time, this was not a huge surprise, as the channel had only a couple of highly-rated original shows on the air. “The Mist” was not one of these shows, with Variety reporting at the time of its cancelation that the show had a Nielsen average rating of 0.14 per episode. Now that’s scary!
Only two Spike shows were carried over into Paramount Network’s programming: the popular competition show “Lip Sync Battle” and the dramatic reality show “Bar Rescue,” both of which garnered consistently decent ratings. All other shows airing on the channel at the time, including “The Mist,” were slowly but surely canceled to make way for new programming. Among these new shows were a miniseries on the 1993 Waco standoff and some Western drama from the guy who played Danny on “Veronica Mars.” That probably didn’t go very far.
The cancelation of “The Mist” promptly led it to be forgotten by most Stephen King and horror fans. It’s a bit sad that the 2007 film has overshadowed it, but at the very least, the show tried doing something unique with the material. Unfortunately, that didn’t translate well into the final product, resulting in it being one of the many casualties of Spike’s rebrand into Paramount Network.