Swan songs rarely look as golden as the long Warner Bros. goodbye. Just a few months ago, the embattled company was in the midst of one of the best runs for any studio in Oscar history — and all the while, Netflix and Paramount Skydance were trading splashy offers to acquire it outright. By the time One Battle After Another, Sinners and Weapons had combined to win 11 Oscars (including best picture), tying a single-studio record, Paramount officially had won the war for the pending merger — leading to widespread panic within Hollywood as to what the future of a major theatrical player at the top of its game would look like.
Around when the Warner-Paramount deal is (presumably) finalized within the next few months, the David Zaslav-led outfit may take home another historic haul as a final demonstration of might — this time on the TV side: Its prized premium streamer, HBO Max, is poised to dominate, just as rumors swirl that it’ll soon be absorbed into the decidedly less prestigious Paramount+. HBO has been an Emmys force for decades. But should The Pitt win best drama and Hacks win best comedy, as is widely expected, the network will have claimed the top two trophies in the same year for the first time in a decade (when Veep and Game of Thrones swept).
Of course, The Pitt and Hacks aren’t technically HBO shows — they were commissioned under the more populist, less established “Max” label, part of chief Casey Bloys’ strategy to expand his tent in a rapidly shifting television and streaming landscape. In that way, they also reflect how nimbly Bloys has played the long game in the six years since HBO Max’s initial launch. The Pitt, a throwback medical drama injected with modern style and structure, was still breaking its own ratings records by the end of its second season. Hacks pulled off a seamless five-season run in an era where most post-COVID streaming comedies were lucky for an encore.
Beyond those frontrunners, this year’s Emmys cycle will put other HBO heavyweights under the spotlight. There’s the return of Euphoria, certainly; no one can agree on the show itself, but there remains no debate around Zendaya’s star turn (undefeated at the Emmys to date). Bill Lawrence’s Rooster, meanwhile, was the network’s highest-rated freshman comedy in 15 years and will throw star Steve Carell in a weak best actor field to vie for his first — yes, you read that correctly — Emmy win.
But Rooster also is a broader, warmer sitcom than you might have expected from the home of all of those aforementioned “comedies” — itself representative of a larger shift. As the mandate changed, HBO evolved. The network exploited the IP within its reach to deliver commercial hits, spinning off the likes of Dune, Game of Thrones and It; pricey, pedigreed new takes on Harry Potter and DC’s Green Lantern are coming up next.
Even if they haven’t all taken off as hoped — nor hit those once-foolproof HBO quality markers — this new blockbuster category also has allowed HBO to keep doing what it does best. It allowed the great bizarro comic Tim Robinson to spearhead a truly strange show, The Chair Company. With I Love LA, it invested in rising young multihyphenate Rachel Sennott for a generation-specific slice of life, just as it had done for Lena Dunham and Issa Rae before her. It stayed in business with the creator of one of our precious few post-COVID phenomena, Mare of Easttown’s Brad Ingelsby, for a smart new continuing drama in Task.
HBO also brought back one of its greatest, most unsung shows ever, The Comeback — canceled for being ahead of its time after 2005’s first season, then revived for a well-received second run in 2014. The recently concluded third and final season boldly tackled AI in Hollywood and reminded audiences of the national treasure that is Lisa Kudrow. (Note: Kudrow has never won for this defining role. I know, Jean Smart is great in Hacks, but she’s already won four times.)
Does this vibrancy of programming — filled with risk, rooted in a belief in idiosyncratic voices and a willingness to expand upon a legacy — exist in a world where HBO is absorbed by Paramount? It’s hard to imagine. For the subscriber count-minded, what Warners offers David Ellison’s company is obvious: a gold mine of untapped IP and an array of existing smashes like The White Lotus and True Detective. What made HBO special — and really, there’s no better example than this year — was the way it leveraged the bigger players to serve the smaller gems. Without Tony Soprano and those True Blood vampires, we might not have the brilliant trio of Laurie Metcalf, Alex Borstein and Niecy Nash in the barely seen Getting On, nor Laura Dern’s Enlightened master class. Those types of shows already are an endangered species these days. Going up against the Taylor Sheridan-verse? They may not stand a chance.
The Television Academy ought to meet this bittersweet moment then. As embracing as the Academy has been of HBO over the years, it’s not like these voters managed to catch on to some of the network’s best-ever shows — cough, The Wire — before it was too late. One of the very best dramas on TV remains Industry, competing for a spectacularly wild fourth season anchored by performances I’d put up against any Emmy lock. This body has consistently ignored it. I worry for Task, which was well received and widely watched but may see its unassuming polish taken for granted in an era of viral breakouts. And did I mention Kudrow is Emmy-less for portraying Valerie Cherish? OK, just making sure.
All of this is to say: HBO Max will have a great night come September. Whatever is next for the streamer, it will have exited this chapter on a high note. But the soul of HBO lurks a bit under that shiny surface, and its precarity speaks to what scares so many about this moment. Some recognition of its resilience couldn’t hurt.
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
