A while back, Warner Bros. — the company that owns HBO — was bought by Discovery — the company that owns Property Brothers. The newly formed company, Warner Bros. Discovery, laid out some of its plans last week in an earnings call, trying to put at ease people who were freaking out over the cancellation of Batgirl, which seemed a grim harbinger of things to come.
And indeed, things do look kinda grim. According to Deadline, new CEO David Zaslav has decided to lay off about 70 people at HBO Max, which is around 14% of the staff. People were laid off in HBO Max’s reality, international, acquisitions, casting and live-action family programming units. The HBO scripted unit, which operates under executive Casey Bloys, didn’t get hit with any layoffs, although some things were shuffled around. For instance, the HBO and HBO Max comedy departments were merged.
Existing reality shows on HBO Max will continue so long as they perform well (rest easy, FBoy Island fans), but HBO Max won’t make any new reality shows; since Discovery has a ton of reality shows already, I guess that makes some sense. As for scripted stuff, all the HBO and HBO Max shows we know appear to be safe…but after “The Batgirl Incident” I don’t blame anyone for feeling on edge.
HBO Max wants to build up Peacemaker, Dune, The Penguin and Green Lantern
And now, Bloys has laid out some new plans in an employee memo, according to Bleeding Cool. He writes that the team will focus on building “tentpole IP series such as Peacemaker, Dune, The Penguin and Green Lantern,” so I guess all of those projects are safe.
There’s been a Dune series on the way for a while, although we haven’t heard a ton about it for a minute. As for all the DC stuff, the first season of Peacemaker was a hit, and Warner Bros. seems invested in keeping creator James Gunn around. A Green Lantern series is in the works, and as for Colin Farrell’s Penguin show…well, we’ll wait and see what happens there.
And of course, there are HBO project so big I don’t think Bloys needs to name them as a priority, like the new Game of Thrones prequel premiering this Sunday:
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