Hulu Not Going Forward With Planned Sammy Davis Jr. Series

Hulu is not proceeding with their planned limited series about Rat Pack staple Sammy Davis, Jr, according to a report from Deadline.

What’s Happening:

A new limited series about crooner, actor, and Rat Pack personality Sammy Davis, Jr. that was set for Hulu is not going forward.
The new series was set to star Elijah Kelley as Sammy Davis, Jr., and came from Lee Daniels and 20th Television.
Reports indicate that the series will be shopped to other platforms, with plans to attach additional high-level talent prior to that to ensure it finds a new home. This is similar to a recent move that occurred recently when The Spiderwick Chronicles was passed by Disney+, and eventually landed at Roku.
Hulu originally ordered the series back in April of 2022, with Kimberly Harrison (The Crossover) attached as showrunner in February of this year.
Written by Daniels and Thomas Westfall based on Will Haygood’s biography, In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Jr., and inspired by Alex Haley’s interview of Davis, the eight-episode series explores the entertainer’s life through the lens of his racial identity and his complex relationship with the Black community.
It centers on Davis (Kelley), who rose from childhood stardom on the vaudeville stage to become one of the most famous African American entertainers of the 1950s and ’60s (and the only Black member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack). At the same time, he spent most of his career surrounded by controversy and ridicule – over his affairs with white film stars, his 1960 marriage to Swedish actress May Britt, his conversion to Judaism, his closeness to the Kennedys (and later Richard Nixon) and his problems with alcohol and drugs.
The reversal on the pickup of the show, along with the aforementioned The Spiderwick Chronicles, is part of a spending cut on content across both Hulu and Disney+, as Disney shifts toward profitability and cutting programming costs, like many other media companies.