Fox Mocks Rumors That ‘Fringe’ Will Be Cancelled

Fox released a promo earlier this week to assuage viewers’ fears that Fringe will soon be cancelled when it moves from Thursday to traditionally low-rated Friday early next year.

The slick parody, created by Ari Margolis in Fox’s “Special Ops” department over two days, features doomsday blog predictions (“…a Friday air date is usually the beginning of the end for any series…” – Collider) and clips from the show of the actors talking about death.

The clip also says, “You May Think Friday Is Dead… But We’re Gonna Reanimate It.” (A reference to last week’s “Marionette: episode.)

Fox’s senior VP of marketing and special projects Dean Norris told EW.com the net came up with the idea after a movie-style trailer for Entrada (featured in the Dec. 2 episode about Fringe’s parallel world storyline) went viral.

“We started getting feedback from the viewers that basically said, ‘How could Fox do something so cool for a show they’re going to kill?’ We started reading these things and said, ‘Wait! We have to address this!'” Norris said.

“We are trying to rebrand Friday, and what we’re trying to do with this show specifically is make it kind of like forbidden fruit,” added Norris. “We want that teen demographic that might not be our audience right now to say, ‘That this is a show my parents might not want me to watch — but I’m going to watch it, anyway.'”

Fringe premiers in its new time slot on Jan. 21. Check out the promo below.