Fox Dumps Its New Animated Show ‘Murder Police’; Will Shop to Other Networks

Fox has pre-canceled its new animated series Murder Police, scrapping the show before it even airs, TV Guide reports. Executives at the network were apparently unhappy with early cuts of the show, which is why they left it off the 2013-14 schedule. The studio behind Murder Police is planning on shopping it around to cable once more episodes are finished. While there’s no indication of what networks the studio is going to first, Adult Swim and TBS seem like likely contenders to grab the show.

Fox ordered 13 episodes of Murder Police last year. The show, from former Family Guy showrunner/Futurama writer David A. Goodman and newcomer Jason Ruiz, follows an inept detective and his co-workers solving serious crimes in a demented city and features the voices of Wilmer Valderrama, Jane Lynch, Will Sasso, Chi McBride, Key & Peele director Peter Atencio, Justina Machado, and Jason Ruiz, who created the show. This leaves a hole in Fox’s Sunday night animated block. While The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers have been renewed for 2014-15 and Family Guy surely will be, American Dad! is moving from Fox to TBS for its next run of episodes.

Although it’s rare for a network to order a show and then cancel it before it airs, it does happen. Last season, NBC pre-canceled the Dane Cook comedy Next Caller due to being unhappy with the show, and CBS didn’t air its new show Friend Me, possibly due to co-creator Alan Kirschenbaum’s suicide. As TV Guide points out, Fox has a habit of doing this more than any other network, with Murder Police joining a long list of shows Fox made but never aired including The Grubbs, Hollyweird, Manchester Prep, The Ortegas, Our Little Genius, Rewind, Schimmel, Septuplets, Still Life, and When Women Rule the World.

Fox Dumps Its New Animated Show ‘Murder Police’; Will […]