Doing a truncated series is like doing a long movie, which allows for a certain artistic freedom. After just 12 episodes, you can take a breather and do other things for your career.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The thing with being on a series that runs that long is that the writers run out of things to do.
The great thing about working in cable is that, since the season is truncated - we only do 12 shows - the writers are more at ease in terms of mapping out the trajectory of the story and the characters.
Being in the industry, I've seen many situations where someone will get the call from the network where they say 'You guys have 5 episodes to wrap it up.' Then all your long-term story arcs gotta get wrapped up in five episodes because that's how many episodes you got left. I would hate to see that happen to 'Castle'.
Although there were only about 24 episodes made it seems to run forever. They take a couple of episodes and put them together, making a feature film once in a while. I had good fun making the series.
When you start working on a series, it's almost too much work. It's like a movie a week.
I've never had a series that's gone past 12 episodes.
With a series, you build the character as you go. When you've got a shorter project or a film, you know the overall arc from the beginning.
The longest show I've ever done was four and a half years, so I can only imagine what ending an eight year show is like.
But did I think it would last more than 13 episodes at the time? No, I didn't think that. I never know.
I've always had a show that went seven episodes or 13 episodes or whatever. And I've never had a show that's gone past a first season. It really is a lot of work.