Starz‘s return to the Spartacus universe with House of Ashur poses the question: What if Ashur (Nick Tarabay) hadn’t died on Mount Vesuvius at the end of Spartacus: Vengeance and instead was gifted Batiatus’s Ludus in return for helping to kill Spartacus and end the slave rebellion?
what a weird premise for a spinoff.
"Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't?"
except Ashur wasn't even "Custer", he was a fairly minor character. If they're going to retcon a character death why not just bring back Batiatus?
“As you turn the slate over to go from season four and five economics, to season one economics, you can pull a ton of cost out of the business. What you have to do is map out each of those shows and … what the curve looks like, and know where you have to pop a new show on to bring that cost down. And so we’ve got a pretty good map of what that looks like. Because again, we focus on those two core demos, we’ve been able to manufacture hits for those demos.”