What HBO & HBO Max Want to Buy Now (and What’s the Difference)
My Summer Sellers’ Guide continues with what, who & how to pitch at the re-rebranded hybrid
I write about TV from L.A. I interviewed a top agent-turned-manager about his take on the TV market, reported on the boom in microdramas and wrote about how L.A. sound stages are scrambling as production dwindles. Reach me at elaine@theankler.com. As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from Elaine, Lesley Goldberg and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.
Welcome to the third installment of my Summer Sellers’ Guide — I’ve taken a tour through Apple’s and Amazon’s ambitions for new series, and today I’m looking at the streamer recently re-rebranded as HBO Max.
The Shows Apple TV+ Wants to Buy Now
The Shows Amazon Wants to Buy Now
At his annual slate presentation last November (when the streamer was still Max, and HBO was, as always, HBO), HBO and Max content chief Casey Bloys unveiled flashy previews for big HBO shows like Game of Thrones spinoff Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
But it was a Max original hospital drama starring Noah Wyle from mega-producer John Wells — both ER veterans — that got a lot of attention, and not just because of the budding lawsuit Michael Crichton’s estate was bringing against Warner Bros. TV over the medical procedural. (That suit, which alleges The Pitt is essentially an ER knockoff made without consulting with or compensating the Crichton estate, is ongoing; in February, a WBTV motion to dismiss was denied.)
A one-hour drama set in a fixed location with a weekly release schedule featuring a bona fide television star-creator pair who cut their teeth on one of the most iconic shows of the ’90s? Talk about a throwback to the broadcast era.
At the time, the show hadn’t yet premiered, but Bloys had seen the first seven episodes and was feeling good about it. He laid out a vision for The Pitt becoming the blueprint for originals from Warner Bros. Discovery’s flagship streaming service and noted several other dramas being developed in the vein of The Pitt that were “more traditional, more procedural.”
“There’s practical and business reasons, and there’s creative reasons,” Bloys told press at the London West Hollywood. “The creative one would be the closed-end storytelling,” he continued. “What I think broadcast television did so well for many, many years — and basic cable — was you could watch one episode. … That is a very different way to approach storytelling, and it does require, in the case of The Pitt, a fixed location in order to do that at a price that is reasonable.”
The practical reason, obviously, has to do with budgets — a front-burner concern as TV studios and streamers tighten purse strings in all departments. The Pitt is produced “at a price that makes it possible to do 15 episodes,” he said. Each episode costs a little more than $4 million, according to a report in Deadline — that’s a quarter of the price of a higher-end Apple TV+ drama — with cast salaries of reportedly $35,000 to $50,000 an episode.
So now that the first season of The Pitt has aired in full, to the tune of 10 million average viewers per episode (plus strong reviews and Emmy buzz), what does it mean for WBD’s appetite for new series?
Related:
Buyers' New Good-for-Sellers Vibe Shift (& What 'The Pitt' Has to Do With It)
I talked to agents about what they’re hearing from both HBO and Max (despite the service now reverting to HBO Max, HBO is still HBO, and streaming-only shows are still called Max Originals) when it comes to the new ideas both are seeking from writers and producers.
Today I’ll tell you:
The differences between what HBO and what HBO Max want now (I know, this is confusing)
Why volume at both have stayed consistent, but mandates for streaming-only series have shifted
How Casey Bloys organizes his greenlight teams at each and who the key players are
How The Pitt has become “a template” for future Max Originals
The decades-old cop series and “muscular” Amazon hit HBO Max wants to emulate
The surprise cancellation that’s left HBO Max low on original dramas
The vibe of the Greg Berlanti soapy drama in the HBO Max pipeline
The streaming service’s very specific comedy mandate (and what today’s politics have to do with it)
How even HBO is paying big stars surprisingly low pre-episode fees