Manifest fans were aghast when NBC announced its decision to cancel the series after three seasons despite the show's creator, Jeff Rake, having a six season plan for the supernatural series. At the time, NBC revealed that the series was canceled to make room for a new Law & Order spinoff on the fall schedule about a criminal defense firm, titled Law & Order: For the Defense. Well, in a move that likely will not please Manifest fans any more than that initial cancelation, Law & Order: For the Defense will not be moving forward at NBC any more.
The spinoff series was given a straight to series order by NBC and was going to be run by Carol Mendelsohn, the former longtime showrunner of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (and the co-creator of the various CSI spinoffs over the years). However, it never actually got to the point of casting actors and now it never will, as it dead at the network, as are the plans for an "All-Law & Order" Thursday night on NBC (veteran drama, The Blacklist, will be moving to Thursdays at 8pm to fill in).
This is the second time that a Law & Order spinoff series was given a straight to series commitment and then still canceled, as the same thing happened in 2018 with Law & Order: Hate Crimes before production on that series was halted in 2019. NBC is still committed to coming up with a third spinoff of the longstanding Dick Wolf series to join Law & Order: SVU (the longest-running drama in American television history) and its spinoff, Law & Order: Organized Crime, which debuted this past spring, starring former longtime SVU star, Christopher Merloni as Elliot Stabler.
Wolf already has three shows on the same night on NBC's Wednesday night (with his three Chicago series) and will also have three shows on CBS on Tuesdays this Fall (with Wolf's FBI and its two spinoff series), but he will have to wait to collect his third all-Wolf night.
Still, Manifest fans have little solace knowing that the theoretical fourth season of the show was pushed off of the schedule for a series that will not actually be released. Manifest also was unable to move to Peacock, NBC's new streaming service, since it already had a streaming deal with Netflix where, in a sad piece of irony, it is one of the most popular series on that streaming service. Sadly not popular enough for Netflix to work out a deal with NBC to save the show, though.
Source: Deadline