Weekly Wrap-Up
January 21 2024

What a week, crew. What a week. Buckle up, this post will be a long (and amazing) ride.

January 14

The #RenewAsACrew campaign announced a new partnership with #HoistTheAds, following Max’s decision not to go forward with a third season for OFMD. Their fundraiser met its goal in 40 minutes – wow! $10,000 of the funds raised will be used for #HoistTheAds, and the rest (about $11,000!) will be donated to charities supported by the cast.

January 16

Casey Bloys, CEO of HBO and Max Content, was quoted as calling on “gay Twitter” to support Max’s show “The Gilded Age.” Needless to say, the gays were not amused.

Neither was (season 1) assistant director Jon Recher.

However, frustration over that didn’t last long, as Astroglide finally responded to the myriad of tweets sent to them by fans hoping to get brand attention (any brand attention, really) for the petition.

Some fans will recall writer Jes Tom’s contribution of whale blubber lube to OFMD lore…

“Haughty Attendant” from 1×05 threw in his lot.

The memes made themselves, really.

While all that was going on, we did hear from a crew member. Ra Vincent won an ADG Award for last season, so we hope he will this time as well!

Eagle-eyed fans noticed a certain cup during the Wellington Paranormal Podcast – and we have a six degrees of Kevin Bacon thing going on with all these shows…

Then, Casey Bloys was again featured in an interview, and this time the reporter asked him about OFMD specifically (everyone thank @edthekraken for that!).

Off topic here, but Our Flag Means Death was recently canceled after two seasons. A petition to revive the show that has more than 50,000 signatures and the fan campaign has raised north of $20,000 to buy ads to save the show. Why was it canceled and what would it take to bring it back? 

Nobody likes to cancel a show. But the fact of the matter is the numbers weren’t there for a renewal. But I will say, whenever we cancel a show, if a creator can set it up elsewhere, we support them. That is an option for Our Flag; it didn’t make sense for us but it might be for someone else. We let the producers know if they can find a home, we’ll be supportive of that.

— The Hollywood Reporter

A representative from the #RenewAsACrew campaign chimed in, saying we mustn’t split our efforts trying to pander to other networks just now. It’s up to Max to sell off the show, so we should continue to pressure Max.

Immediately after, we heard from creator David Jenkins.

Fans were concerned about the past tense being used, but…

We also heard from Con and Vico (the latter had yet to share anything renewal-related, which got everyone’s attention).

January 17

OFMD was nominated (again!) for a GLAAD Award!

Madeleine Sami’s show “Deadloch” also got a nod!

We heard some more about S3 plans from an industry insider. (The more we hear, the more we’re frustrated that things were definitely further along that anyone realized!)

https://twitter.com/TheCozyPirate/status/1747643981549175081?s=20

Rachel House is directing a new movie – here is the trailer!

Fandom energy was growing to such an extent that we started seeing trending hashtags in other countries!

The OFMD billboards for Max’s “For Your Consideration” campaign (for the awards season) are still apparently going in Los Angeles…

January 18

With the energy of the fandom at an all-time high, #RenewAsACrew announced the details of their #HoistTheAds campaign – a billboard in Times Square in New York City, and a sky banner and ad truck in Los Angeles!

“The End We Start From,” starring Joel Fry, began showing in theaters across the US and UK. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Then Rhys posted a new selfie for the first time since the news of the cancellation! Fans were excited to see that maybe we were stirring up some OFMD-related feelings in our cast with our noise-making.

David Jenkins also posted Rhys’ selfie…

…right around the time we started hearing that maybe someone was meeting with a new network about acquiring the show?

https://twitter.com/TheCozyPirate/status/1748069958540497026?s=20
https://twitter.com/TheCozyPirate/status/1748073465783988730?s=20

January 19

Rumors, frustration, trending hashtags – the fandom was already buzzing with energy.

And then #HoistTheAds went live.

We heard that the cast group chat and Max staff were buzzing with activity!

https://twitter.com/TheCozyPirate/status/1748430806358397167?s=20
https://twitter.com/TheCozyPirate/status/1748440302036168931?s=20

Meanwhile! Our new brand friend Astroglide led a live-tweet watch-a-long of the first episode! You can find all the awesome tweets at #LubeAsACrew.

And oh by the way—

https://twitter.com/Couldbemate/status/1748284205140762894?s=20

What a day. Best Friday the fandom’s seen in a long time.

January 20

Fans have been reaching out to Max to ask why they haven’t been proudly bragging about their GLAAD Award nominations (not just OFMD!). David Jenkins liked that.

We got a new video from Vico!

And David Jenkins gave tons of love to the fans…

…and the #RenewAsACrew folks took that as a sign to ease up on pressuring Max and start reaching out to other networks (specifically Netflix, Amazon, and Apple TV, as tagged by Jenks).

Popular Accounts Who Shared the Petition / Interacted with Renewal Tweets
https://www.tumblr.com/neil-gaiman/739647022576123904/hello-mister-gaiman-have-you-heard-that-our

Other Things This Week:

So uh, yeah. That was how the week went. Redditors summed it up the best:

If you haven’t been on Twitter in the past few days, this may clear things up a bit.
byu/lesmax inOurFlagMeansDeath

Until next time,
@OFMDCrew

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