After Some Wheeling and Dealing, ‘The Penguin’ and ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Will Air on HBO After All
After Some Wheeling and Dealing, ‘The Penguin’ and ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Will Air on HBO After All
Several Max Originals were rebranded as HBO Originals earlier this year, and now ‘Dune: Prophecy’ and ‘The Penguin’ will join them.
Don’t look now, but it appears the HBO brand is rising from the dead. Warner Bros. Discovery has never tried to really kill HBO, per se, but the decision to name its new streaming service Max and drop the “HBO” from the title in 2023 raised more than a few eyebrows from observers. Now, the company appears to be slowly rolling back that change; in late June, the company announced that it was rebranding several Max Original shows as HBO Originals, but only for titles that were coming out in 2025 or later due to contractual issues. But a new report from Variety states that those issues have been ironed out, and that “Dune: Prophecy” and “The Penguin” — two shows that are set to debut later in 2024 — will also be given the title of “HBO Original” instead of rolling out exclusively on Max.
Key Details:
- “The Penguin” and “Dune: Prophecy” will now play on HBO as well as stream on Max when they’re released.
- Originally, the shows could not be labeled HBO Originals because international licensing had already begun.
- Ultimately, the quality of the shows matters far more than their marketing designations.
The initial show rebrands for titles like “Welcome to Derry,” the Green Lantern-focused series “Lanterns” and the “Harry Potter” show was done in the name of experimentation, according to HBO and Max content chief Casey Bloys.
“It’s a confusing time in the business, consumers figuring out streaming and shows that were on linear and streaming and vice versa,” he said. “We’re trying to adapt and figure out what is the best way to approach this in a world where streaming is dominant. So, there is going to be experimentation, there are going to be mistakes. Because this is all still relatively new in the history of television.”
The reason that this overhaul was not happening for “The Penguin” and “Dune: Prophecy,” Bloys explained, was because the two shows had already begun to be licensed in international markets. Max is available in a growing number of countries around the world, but WBD also licenses the shows from Max and HBO to other streamers in places where Max hasn’t arrived yet. Those deals are very difficult to untangle once they’re signed, and Bloys seemed resigned to that fact when he spoke about the HBO Original rebranding in June.
“‘The Penguin’ would be an obvious fit as an HBO Original,” Bloys said after having seen an initial cut of episodes. “Unfortunately, the process of licensing it internationally has already started.”
But some fancy negotiating work has apparently allowed WBD to give the two shows the HBO Original moniker after all. For fans, this won’t mean much of a difference; all that will change from a viewing standpoint is that the two shows will be available to watch on HBO and Max simultaneously, instead of just on the streaming service. But from WBD’s perspective, it allows viewers to associate the titles with the HBO brand, which has long had a reputation for high quality.
“What we ended up with is shows at this scope and scale that look great, and great narratives and talent we’ve worked with,” Bloys said of the strategy. “The idea of the delineation kind of started to feel unnecessary. Like, why are we doing this? Let’s just call them what they are: HBO shows.”
The changeover begs the question of why WBD decided to drop “HBO” from its streaming service’s name in the first place. Obviously, the company wanted to delineate the streamer from its predecessor HBO Max, which had a more limited scope of content. But the premium reputation of HBO content is a huge draw among viewers, and WBD executives clearly know that.
Perhaps they thought declines in linear TV meant audiences were ready to move past a brand that had been so intimately associated with cable previously. Or maybe they thought people would still think of Max as “HBO Max” in their heads, and the HBO and Max brands would marry up automatically in people’s heads. Whatever the case, the move back to HBO Originals is a sign that Max on its own is not yet a household name in the way WBD would like.
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