Fans of ABC’s Nashville are Twitter-campaigning as hard as they can to #BringBackNashville, CNN reports. When ABC announced that the musical drama was being cancelled after four seasons, our hearts shattered. What’s worse, the show ended on a cliffhanger… one so dramatic some are going as far as to say the move was “disrespectful to fans.”
Lionsgate Television CEO Kevin Beggs defended the decision to air such a shocking ending in what many thought would be the series finale. There was the fact that nobody—not even the writers or producers—had any idea that Nashville would be canceled, so the season finale wasn’t planned out as an end to the entire show. But even with that knowledge, Beggs pointed out that just because Nashville wouldn’t be airing on ABC moving forward doesn’t mean it can’t live on somewhere else.
“There’s a little short-term pain but ultimately long-term gain because we intend and are quite focused and are in substantive and serious conversations with multiple buyers about continuing the show on another platform,” Beggs said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “If we didn’t feel that was going to happen, we might have gone a different way.”
Of course, while the cast, crew, producers and fans are working hard to #BringBackNashville (such as Aubrey Peeples, who plays Layla Grant and live-tweeted the finale from @HerCampus!), it might not be long before we get the sense of closure many are hoping for. Whether or not the show gets picked up by another network or streaming service, there’s an alternate, happier ending that may be made available online, according to Beggs.
“I’m sure we would figure out a satisfying way for audiences to see an alternative ending—but it won’t be as good as the ending we have given them,” he said. “In a perfect world, we’d be making this show for many more seasons. Our hope and intention is to have an asset that continues to grow for many years.”
Nobody wants to see the end of Nashville—any takers? Netflix? Hulu? We’re looking at you.