Why Nat Geo's Genius dropped Mary Shelley for Aretha Franklin

Indiewire

The Frankenstein author was supposed to be the subject of Season 3 of the Genius anthology series -- before she was dumped for Aretha Franklin. “We were super-excited about Mary Shelley, a fascinating person, a fascinating life," National Geographic boss Courteney Monroe said at the TV press tour. "The fact is that we just couldn’t find a way to crack it creatively for an eight- to 10-hour limited series. And our feeling was if we couldn’t do it in a really excellent way and do it right, then we shouldn’t do it. So that’s what happened. We really tried. We had it in development for months. We just couldn’t crack it for a limited series, so we are not moving forward with Mary Shelley, but we are aggressively moving forward with Aretha."