'Bloodaxe' Rounds Out Cast with Filming Underway

It was over a decade ago, in 2013, that Michael Hirst's Vikings debuted on the American cable network known as The History Channel. Nicknamed "The Hitler Channel" for the sheer amount of World War II-focused series that dominated its lineup, Vikings was The History Channel's first attempt at a big-budget historical drama... and thanks to the streaming wars that broke out in the following months, also its last. Owned by A&E Networks (which itself was a company jointly owned by Herst and Disney), it had no streaming service on which to put Vikings, so the series wound up on Netflix.

Unsurprisingly, Hirst's sequel series follow-up, Vikings: Valhalla, was then greenlit by Netflix after the parent series concluded with its sixth season in 2019. Delayed due to the pandemic, Vahalla finally arrived in 2022, but mainly flew under the radar, especially for American audiences, who had either stopped watching the History Channel years before the show concluded, or never watched in the first place. Unsurprisingly, Netflix canceled the show as soon as its initially contracted three seasons were up.

With The History Channel a non-starter and Netflix pulling the plug, Hirst simply did what any sensible person would do: drove across town to Amazon Studios, where people with more money than sense desperately need franchises that have actual viewership. The rights to the Vikings name are tied up over at Netflix, but Prime Video greenlit the next installment, Bloodaxe, and is aiming to bring the period drama back in a big way.