Stanley Tucci’s travels to Italy have been interrupted.
CNN has cancelled “Searching for Italy,” the travel-and-cuisine program that had the actor journeying across Italy to sample food and culture. The series has been an internal favorite at CNN, which had gained traction in the past for a similar documentary program led by Anthony Bourdain.
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“Unfortunately, CNN has canceled all of their original programming, so hopefully we’ll end up on another streamer, network, we don’t know,” Tucci told Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday’s broadcast of NBC’s “Tonight Show.” “But yes, I have plans to do season three and more.”
A spokeswoman for Raw UK, the production studio behind “Searching for Italy” as well as a similar series built around Eva Longoria and Mexico slated to debut on CNN next year, could not be reached for immediate comment.
The series has put Tucci, known for TV shows and movies ranging from the ABC drama “Murder One” to 2012’s “Hunger Games,” in a new light. He has written two different books on cooking. His interest in the culinary arts should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the 1996 movie “Big Night,” a film about two brothers who make one last grand meal at a failing restaurant they won. Tucci co-directed the movie with Campbell Scott.
After spending the past decade developing a library of original documentary series, CNN is paring back its ambitions in the space. The Warner Bros. Discovery-backed outlet is ending its efforts to develop original series and films with third-party production entities.
In 2023, the network will still show several projects that were already in the pipeline, but the work has been deemed as costly to a company that is straining to reduce its debt load. On Wednesday, Warner Bros. Discovery revealed in an SEC filing that it was expanding its estimates for the amount of charges it will have to take to restructure the company and write off underperforming content.
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