HBO Max Confirms Lackluster Fate of 'The Pitt'-Esque Series

HBO Max is in a stretch right now where it has earned a little benefit of the doubt. The streamer just came off another well-received season of House of the Dragon, has Lanterns slated as an important part of James Gunn’s rebuilt DC universe, and is still enjoying the momentum The Pitt gave it. The 15-episode medical drama quickly became one of the platform’s most reliable assets, averaging more than 10 million global viewers per episode in its first season and then growing season-over-season when it returned in 2026.

The Pitt even drew more U.S. streaming viewership than the long-running ABC drama Grey’s Anatomy. What the series managed to do appears to have convinced HBO Max that there may still be room for a more old-fashioned TV model on streaming, with longer seasons and new episodes arriving every week and a new season debuting yearly. Back in November 2025, the streamer ordered two pilots in hopes of recreating some of The Pitt’s success. One of them, it turns out, is not moving forward.

Deadline reports that HBO Max has passed on American Blue, the police drama that would have starred Milo Ventimiglia, and Warner Bros. Television is now taking the project to other buyers. David Ayer, who wrote Training Day and later directed End of Watch, Fury, and Suicide Squad, was set to direct the pilot. Broadcast networks are still very much in the market for star-led police dramas like this, and rival streamers have been openly hunting for their own Pitt-shaped hit.

Ventimiglia, coming off six seasons as one of the faces of This Is Us, attached to a finished pilot, is not the hardest thing Warner Bros. Television has ever had to shop. Still, no buyer has reportedly stepped up yet, so some skepticism is probably warranted. The fuller picture of the day is that HBO Max’s experiment is going one for two. The streamer’s other pilot, the Greg Berlanti and Bash Doran family drama How to Survive Without Me, appears to be in far better shape. Deadline notes there’s no official word yet, “but it has been looking good and appears poised to get a series pickup.”

That one stars Ray Romano, Kaley Cuoco, and Joshua Jackson, and follows the De Angelis family adjusting to life after the death of its matriarch, played by Rita Wilson. If it goes to series, it would suggest HBO Max sees the annual model working better for a warm ensemble family drama than for another entry in an overcrowded cop genre. For Ventimiglia, there is at least a little sting here. Since This Is Us ended, he has not yet found a follow-up with the same kind of staying power, and The Company You Keep only lasted one season at ABC in 2023.