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Tag: Casey Bloys

  • Euphoria Season 3 Release Date Window Set for Zendaya-Led HBO Show

    Euphoria fans got a surprise update this weekend, with the show’s third season release date window being revealed.

    When is the Euphoria Season 3 release date window?

    Speaking to Variety while at the Emmys over the weekend, HBO head Casey Bloys spoke about a litany of content coming up for the iconic network. When it comes to Euphoria Season 3, though, Bloys was surprisingly open about when to expect the third season of the Zendaya-led show.

    “It’ll be the spring, but we don’t have a date confirmed yet,” said Bloys when he was asked about when fans might expect a premiere date for Euphoria Season 3. It’s unclear exactly when the show will arrive, but it does seem to be sooner than some fans previously thought.

    Euphoria’s third season has been an up-and-down production. Initially, Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, and the rest of the cast of Euphoria were set to begin filming on Season 3 in 2024, but HBO announced that it had postponed production, with stars told to pursue other opportunities while creator Sam Levinson worked on the third season.

    Shortly after the postponement, reports began to surface that people at HBO were unsure if a third season would ever happen due to the different visions that the creative team for the show had.

    According to reports at the time, early drafts of Season 3 stories were seen as unsatisfying to HBO, with Levinson’s original vision for the new series featuring a five-year time jump. HBO was reportedly happy with the storylines given to Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi’s characters in the early drafts; however, the company took issue with Zendaya’s proposed character arc, which saw her working as a private detective.

    Now, though, it seems as if things are progressing well for the show’s highly anticipated third and potentially final season.

    (Source: Variety)

    Anthony Nash

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  • Warner Bros. Wants You to Think of HBO Before Max Again

    Warner Bros. Wants You to Think of HBO Before Max Again

    Eagle-eyed observers might have noticed the change with today’s announcement that Lanterns, a drama series based on DC’s Green Lanterns characters, is officially getting an eight-episode series order at HBO. That’s right: HBO at the forefront, instead of being labeled as a “Max Original” for the oft-renamed HBO streaming service.

    Andrew Callaghan Talks ‘This Place Rules’

    Warner Bros. was designating DC shows as “Max Originals” rather than “HBO Originals” as late as last week, when the latest trailer for The Penguin dropped. But there’s been a shift in the branding, according to a report in Variety that HBO and Max content CEO Casey Bloys is “moving most of Max’s upcoming big-budget, tentpole Warner Bros. IP projects to under the HBO umbrella.”

    This shift covers shows releasing in 2025 and beyond—so 2024 releases The Penguin and Dune: Prophecy are both expected to still be labeled as Max shows; “the process of licensing [The Penguin] internationally has already started,” Bloys explained. But once the calendar turns over, look for Lanterns, Stephen King-inspired It prequel series Welcome to Derry, and the Harry Potter series that WB is insistent upon making to fall under that HBO Originals banner.

    This switch undoes the previous intention to keep all shows based on WB properties under the Max Originals label, and it came about when Bloys and other execs realized the WB shows weren’t all that different from HBO’s own creations. “As we started producing those shows, we were using the same methods, the same kind of thinking, as how we would approach HBO shows,” he told Variety, noting that there’s even crossover between talent, such as Watchmen’s Damon Lindelof now working on Lanterns. “The idea of the delineation kind of started to feel unnecessary … Let’s just call them what they are: HBO shows.”

    What does that mean for viewers? Not a lot. It means that if you see an HBO Original being marketed, it will get the perceived prestige of being on the HBO linear channel; all HBO shows will still stream on Max. Max-only series will still exist, but they’ll be “more in the broadcast/traditional TV vein” and will have more scaled-down budgets compared to the HBO shows. When asked why the company doesn’t just make every show an HBO show, which would be the least confusing way forward, Bloys said, “I do think it is helpful to have a brand that doesn’t put the expectations or the intention of an HBO show. If it’s not designed to do that, it shouldn’t have to.”

    Make of that what you will. The Penguin, perhaps the last of the DC Max Originals, arrives September 8.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

    Cheryl Eddy

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  • The Head of HBO Allegedly Asked Staffers to Fight Critics on Twitter

    The Head of HBO Allegedly Asked Staffers to Fight Critics on Twitter

    The head honchos at HBO are apparently reading your tweets, and they are not happy about them. According to a report from Rolling Stone, a new wrongful termination lawsuit filed against HBO alleges that HBO CEO Casey Bloys instructed staffers to make secret social media accounts in order to clap back at critics of the premium cable network.  

    Per Rolling Stone, Bloys sent multiple texts asking HBO staffers to target critics—both professional writers and anonymous Deadline commenters. Some of the texts are included in material being compiled for a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by former HBO staffer Sully Temori against HBO, HBO senior vice president of drama programming Kathleen McCaffrey, HBO head of drama Francesca Orsi, The Idol’s Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, and two other producers for The Idol.

    According to the complaint, the plaintiff began working at HBO in 2015 as a temp and became an executive assistant in 2017. He worked on The Idol in August 2021 and was laid off in October 2021, the lawsuit says. Rolling Stone reports that Temori’s suit alleges that he was “harassed and faced retaliation and discrimination after disclosing a mental health diagnosis to his bosses.” According to Rolling Stone, lawyers representing HBO have requested that a judge dismiss Temori’s suit, with HBO denying “each and every allegation.”

    Temori’s complaint claims that McCaffrey asked him to create fake accounts in 2020. Per texts being prepared for the complaint and reviewed by Rolling Stone, McCaffrey said that Bloys was “obsessed with Twitter,” and “always wants to pick a fight on Twitter.” 

    “He always texts me asking me to find friends to reply,” reads one of the messages from McCaffrey, according to Rolling Stone. “Is there a way to create a dummy account that can’t be traced to us to do his bidding?” 

    Per the report, the lawsuit also contains multiple text exchanges displaying what Temori’s attorney, Michael Martinez, calls the “very petty” culture at HBO. “They joke about people outside of HBO, they joke about people within HBO,” Martinez told Rolling Stone. “You suffer through some bullying until you can’t suffer anymore.”

    As Rolling Stone reports, in 2020, when Bloys was HBO’s president of original programming, he allegedly became upset when Vulture television critic Kathryn VanArendonk tweeted about HBO’s Perry Mason, then in its first season. Bloys then reportedly ordered some staffers to “go on a mission” and fire back at VanArendonk. According to text messages reviewed by Rolling Stone, Bloys texted VanArendonk’s tweet to McCaffrey with an idea for a rebuttal. “Maybe a Twitter user should tweet that that’s a pretty blithe response to what soldiers legitimately go through on [the] battlefield,” read Bloys’s text. “Do you have a secret handle? Couldn’t we say especially given that it’s D-Day to dismiss a soldier’s experience like that seems pretty disrespectful…this must be answered!”

    Bloys reportedly went on to text McCaffrey that they needed to find a “mole” at “arms length” from HBO’s executive team who was ready and willing to take on VanArendonk. Rolling Stone reported that the text exchange between Bloys and McCaffrey is one of six exchanges discussing firing back at Twitter critics that occurred between June 2020 and April 2021. 

    Chris Murphy

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  • HBO Max Announces Plans To Destroy All Evidence ‘The Sopranos’ Ever Existed

    HBO Max Announces Plans To Destroy All Evidence ‘The Sopranos’ Ever Existed

    NEW YORK—In the wake of recent moves to reduce the size of its library in order to save on residual payments, streaming service HBO Max announced Thursday it would move forward with a plan to destroy all evidence that The Sopranos ever existed. “Once we have finished burning the 35-millimeter film on which the series was shot and deleting all digitized footage, we will begin confiscating millions of DVD box sets, which will then be steamrolled into tiny pieces and dumped into the Hudson River,” said CEO Casey Bloys, who explained that HBO would begin enforcing a unique noncompete clause in cast members’ contracts that would prohibit Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Lorraine Bracco, and other Sopranos stars from ever again taking an acting role and inadvertently reminding viewers of the show’s existence. “We have already bulldozed the structures used for exterior shots of Tony Soprano’s home and Satriale’s Pork Store, and will soon proceed with demolitions of the Lincoln Tunnel and the entirety of the New Jersey Turnpike.” Bloys confirmed that HBO had also directed its general counsel to send cease and desist letters to every Italian restaurant in the world that has baked ziti on the menu.

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