Kurt Sutter Exits His Netflix Series ‘The Abandons’ As Production Nears End

EXCLUSIVE: This is a shocker — Kurt Sutter is out of the Netflix series The Abandons just three weeks before the sprawling Western starring Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson is slated to wrap production in Calgary. Sutter was the executive producer/showrunner on the series, which he also created.

The Abandons executive producer/director Otto Bathurst and co-exec producer Rob Askins will oversee the rest of the shoot, which will continue as scheduled with no new showrunner named. (Sutter and Bathurst are pictured in the cast photo taken at the start of production in May, which you can see above.) The Abandons is about six episodes into its seven-episode shoot, I hear. Reps for Netflix and Sutter declined comment.

The departure is believed to stem from creative differences over the direction of the big-scale production as it is wrapping filming and headed into post. I hear an alarm went off at Netflix when the initial cut of the dense first episode, which sets the scene and introduces the large group of main characters, came in at 1 hour and 40 minutes. Cutting that down to an hour proved impossible, so a decision was made for the episode, written by Sutter and directed by Bathurst, to be split into two. That required creating a cliffhanger in the middle of the episode with additional scenes on both ends to wrap the premiere and kick off Episode 2.

According to sources, those additional scenes have been written but have not been shot yet, so Netflix’s decision to make a change at the helm of The Abandons comes after they have seen the unfinished, newly split first two episodes and part of Episode 3. I hear Netflix executives felt the cuts looked a bit disjointed and not propulsive enough but there wasn’t a meeting between the streamer’s top brass and Sutter for him to address the concerns.

This would not be the first time Sutter has not seen eye-to-eye with executives over creative. And it is not the first time he has exited a show during production.

In 2019, Sutter was fired from his previous series, FX’s Mayans M.C., following an investigation into complaints from writers, producers, cast and crew about a hostile work environment on the show. Sutter at the time disputed the allegations — he has subsequently owned up to his past behavior — and instead put the spotlight on the “creative scrutiny of Disney,” that he claimed had created a conflict as he “pushed back. Hard.”

Besides chatter about friction with top talent on The Abandons, there are no reports of a major discord on the set. I hear the big-scope production did go over budget, with plans to mitigate some of that by shaving off one day of filming on the finale, whose script, written by Sutter, had been approved by Netflix five weeks ago. Because of across-the-board budget cuts at Netflix (and other networks and streamers), the order to The Abandons, originally announced as 10 episodes, had been trimmed to 8 and subsequently 7 episodes. With the Episode 1 split, it is now going back up to 8.

The Abandons follows a group of diverse, outlier families pursuing their Manifest Destiny in 1850s Oregon, as a corrupt force of wealth and power, coveting their land, tries to force them out. These abandoned souls, the kind of lost souls living on the fringe of society, unite their tribes to form a family and fight back. In this bloody process, “justice” is stretched beyond the boundaries of the law. The Abandons will explore that fine line between survival and law, the consequences of violence, and the corrosive power of secrets, as this family fights to keep their land.

Sutter, who told Deadline that had always wanted to do a Western, was inspired to create The Abandons after watching Bonanza reruns over the pandemic. He set the project at Netflix — which had been on a lookout for a Western series — in 2021.

In addition to Headey and Anderson, the ensemble cast includesNick Robinson, Diana Silvers, Lamar Johnson, Natalia del Riego, Lucas Till, Aisling Franciosi, Toby Hemingway, Michael Greyeyes, Ryan Hurst, Katelyn Wells, Clayton Cardenas, Elle-Maija Tailfeathers, Brían F. O’Byrne, Marc Menchaca, Patton Oswalt, Michael Ornstein, Jonathan Koensgen, Jack Doolan, Michiel Huisman, Haig Sutherland and Sarah White.

Rosy Cordero and Lynette Rice contributed to this report.