"Not having a fourth season of Deadwood is not the result anyone wanted," HBO chief executive and chairman Chris Albrecht told The Chicago Tribune after the possibility disappeared like a dead gold miner's body into Mr. Wu's pigpen. Although HBO couldn't reach an agreement with co-producer Paramount, and even though it let its actors' contracts expire, the network really did fight to keep Deadwood alive.
HBO wanted creator David Milch to concentrate his efforts on his next show for the network — the surreal, spiritual surfing drama John from Cincinnati — so executives offered him a six-episode final season of Deadwood, as opposed to the traditional 12. He turned it down. "It seemed to me that some sort of partial order for the show would make it impossible to do anything but superimpose all sort of interpretations that would deprive it of its own emotion," Milch said.
But then, just days before Deadwood's third season premiered, HBO announced that those episodes would not be the end of the line, as the network had accepted Milch's pitch to wrap up the series with a pair of two-hour specials. "He found a way to bring closure to the narrative and remain true to the themes of the material and spirit of the characters," network spokesperson Nancy Lesser said. Those specials never materialized.
