Magnum P.I. Director Acknowledges Fan Campaign As Reboot Show Prepares To End With Season 5

Magnum P.I. director and actor Zachary Knighton acknowledges the huge fan campaign that occurred after the show’s initial cancelation. Based on Donald P. Bellisario and Glen A. Larson’s 1980 show of the same name, Magnum P.I. follows Jay Hernandez’s Thomas Magnum, a Hawaiian private investigator and former SEAL member who solves different crimes. After four relatively successful seasons, CBS pulled the plug on the action drama show, which prompted a big fan campaign to save the show. Months later, the show was picked up by NBC, who renewed it for a fifth and final season, which began airing in October.

While speaking with TVLine for the final season, Zachary Knighton, who stars as Orville “Rick” Wright in the Magnum P.I. reboot, acknowledges the enormous fan campaigns to save the show and their efforts to bring a worthwhile conclusion to it. Knighton admits the creators of the show and even the cast members could feel the abundant wave of love and support from their fans, and he hopes that everyone can appreciate what they’ve achieved so far even as they bring the show to a conclusion. Read his full comments below:

Obviously, this group of fans is very passionate. There was another billboard in Times Square the other day [the #SaveMagnumPI campaign’s 25th overall]. There was a pretty big campaign to save Happy Endings when we got canceled, but nothing like this. I mean, this is absolute insanity and I love these guys. I feel for them. I know that everyone’s pretty upset that the show is going away, but I hope that everyone can appreciate that we did the best we could, and we made the best show we could make for everyone, and everyone really is feeling the love from the fans. So, I hope everybody is happy with how things end up.

Why Is The Magnum P.I. Reboot Ending With Season 5?

The past year or so has proven to be a fairly tumultuous one for both the fans and creators of the Magnum P.I. reboot. Shortly after the season 4 finale aired in May 2022, CBS announced it was going to be canceling the series. The cancelation came as a shock, seeing as the reboot had garnered a sizable following, and it was placed among the Top 25 shows on broadcast television. CBS, however, had a reasonable excuse for pulling the plug.

CBS and the network’s lead studio, Universal Television, were both caught in a lengthy conversation regarding the license fee of Magnum P.I. When the respective parties could not come to an agreement, Universal Television decided to sell the rights of the show to NBC, who picked up the show for a 20-episode season 5 in June 2022. However, shortly after NBC picked up the show, they announced that season 5 would be the end of the road for the show.

While there have been multiple reasons stated as to why NBC also decided to pull the plug on Magnum P.I., the most significant reason was because the cast’s contracts were up for negotiation for a possible season 6. The show’s move to NBC reportedly caused a sharp decline in its viewership numbers and, considering the SAG-AFTRA strike, which also caused a lot of uncertainty, NBC decided not to renew the contracts of the show’s cast members and instead decided that Magnum P.I. season 5 would be the final season.