It would be surprising that TPCI wouldn’t know how many episodes are going to be produced for the season. While the TPCI staff probably doesn’t have a big role in planning the narrative arc of the show, they should be getting information on the series including episode counts, plot arcs, and even scripts as it is finalized. They need to market, sell, and localize the show everywhere outside of Japan, and its hard to do those tasks without having accurate information. All of these things have long lead times - networks need time to schedule and sell advertising, TPCI needs to book studios, VAs, translators, production work like music and localized credits needs to be done, and there are a lot of contracts and money that gets tied up in these things.
A few episodes getting scrapped or the storylines condensed/consolidated and replaced with recaps to ease production issues? Sure - being off by 2-3 episodes wouldn’t be a big deal. 16 episodes is just too many for that to be plausible though, and cutting that many episodes after selling the series would impact their revenue and future ability to sell overseas in the future when there isnt a compelling reason for it.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think TPC is just going to pull the rug out from under everyone by ending a series early for some marginal cross-promotion. This seems more like an accidental disclosure that should have happened after the M8 wrapped up and the final arc was announced.
I have no idea what they would do with these remaining episodes or what they have planned.
