HBO boss explains why they removed Westworld from HBO Max

Time was, Westworld was one of the great new hopes for HBO, a splashy sci-fi series that could help the network stay strong as Game of Thrones began to wrap up. The first season was critically acclaimed and widely watched, the second less so but still enjoyed, the third a mess and the fourth barely a blip. And then HBO canceled the show ahead of a planned fifth and final season, and finally removed it from HBO Max in an ignominious burial.

That said, Westworld is experiencing an afterlife of sorts airing on FAST streaming services like Roku and Tubi, where it’s free to watch with ads. Speaking to Variety, HBO and HBO Max content chief Casey Bloys talked about the reasoning behind this decision.

“The conversation was, what’s the right amount of money in streaming, so that means what’s the right amount of money for Max originals?” Bloys said. “And conversations about library, does every single library show that we have on HBO Max need to be exclusive to HBO Max? I would say no.”

"People kind of forget the history of television was windows, DVDs. These are expensive shows to make. The idea that they’re going to sit in a library forever and ever for $15 a month, that’s never how TV has operated."

Why HBO didn’t keep HBO show Westworld on the HBO Max streaming service

Bloys said that he talked with Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy before removing the show from HBO Max and releasing it through these new channels. “I think people sometimes forget there is a vast majority of the population that don’t want to pay anything for a streaming service, not only here, but internationally,” he said. “In the same way that Netflix was a brand-new thing, let’s throw some shows up there and expose it to a new audience and see how it does. I think you have to kind of dip your toe in and see what’s out there. I have no idea if FAST is going to be a huge business. But I do know that some people don’t want to pay and are OK with getting ads. And that’s a potentially very big audience and a new audience for a show. So that’s something we’re trying.”

From a business standpoint, everything Bloys is saying makes sense; it is more cost-effective to release some shows through other channels rather than to make everything available for a price of a streaming subscription. But on the other hand, I think most people believe that everything-everywhere-all-at-once is the promise of streaming. More and more studios are figuring out that this model may not be sustainable, so I think we can expect more moves like this in the future, from HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery and potentially elsewhere.

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