Less Love for "Cupid" at ABC?

It definitely seems as though there are some problems with ABC's relaunch of romantic drama Cupid and not of the romantic kind.

The series, which stars Bobby Cannavale, Sarah Paulson, Rick Gomez, and Camille Guaty, was originally slated to air this spring with 13 episodes. Back in December, it was widely reported that ABC slashed Cupid's episodic order to nine episodes, including the pilot, and announced that the series would premiere on Tuesday, March 24th.

Today, ABC indicated that it would bump Cupid's premiere back a week to Tuesday, March 31st. However, that's not the only news for the Rob Thomas-executive produced series.

A source within ABC Studios, speaking on condition of anonymity, has told me that ABC has once again cut Cupid's order, this time to seven episodes, including the pilot.

The reason behind the reduced order? That old standby: creative differences, according to my source, who tells me that Cupid's writers had sent the network story beats for the last two installments of the original nine-episode order. The network was said to be displeased and asked the writers to submit outlines for the two episodes. After allegedly being unhappy with the outlines, ABC then informed the production that they were cutting the order back by two episode due to creative differences.

ABC, however, maintains that the reduced order they handed out in December had been for eight episodes including Cupid's pilot, rather than the widely reported nine installments, though they did acknowledge that they had now slashed the order to seven episodes.

Furthermore, ABC states that the decision to reduce Cupid's order was based on scheduling rather than creative concerns. Once the premiere date was shifted, that eighth episode was no longer needed.

Is it possible then that creative concerns allowed ABC to cut the order once more, bringing Cupid's episodic total to nearly half of its original order, thus enabling the network to cut costs in the process and free up another week in the schedule? Perhaps.

However, regardless of the cause, the end result remains the same: this Cupid will only be firing seven arrows this season.

Stay tuned.