A first look teaser for HBO Max’s Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts (above) aired on Sunday night following Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tournament of Houses on TBS and Cartoon Network. The teaser features appearances from Robbie Coltrane, Matthew Lewis, and Mark Williams. The retrospective special—premiering Jan. 1— is celebrating 20 years since the release
HBO Max
While Samba TV reported today that 707K U.S. households watched the Will Smith drama King Richard over the weekend, an even more interesting detail was how HBO Max subscribers tuned in: The OTT service tells us that a majority of subs watched the biopic about Serena and Venus Williams’ coach father from start-to-finish without pausing. Translation, King
It’s been a big year for Christina Sulebakk. The esteemed international TV exec was appointed by WarnerMedia to General Manager of HBO Max EMEA in January, giving her oversight of HBO Max in the region as it geared up for its launch and future expansion in various territories. The move also put her in charge
In the wake of Sony’s attempt to reboot Ghostbusters in 2016 with a female leading cast, the studio hasn’t given up on the IP and finally is releasing an all-new Jason Reitman-directed sequel, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which it has protected for a theatrical release throughout the pandemic. Exhibition bosses went nuts at CinemaCon for the movie, which has
EXCLUSIVE: Alanna Ubach (Bombshell, Euphoria) has joined the Season 2 cast of HBO Max’s critically acclaimed series The Flight Attendant as a recurring guest star. She’ll appear in the new season—which is currently in production—alongside returning series regulars Kaley Cuoco, Zosia Mamet, Griffin Matthews, Deniz Akdeniz and Rosie Perez; new series regulars Mo McRae, Callie Hernandez
HBO Max will bring in the new year with the final season of popular dark comedy Search Party. The streamer revealed that season five will be the final season. It comes as it set the premiere date for its return and unveiled a first look at the season. Created by Charles Rogers and Sarah-Violet Bliss,
EXCLUSIVE: HBO Max has picked up to pilot half-hour family comedy Camp Friends (working title). The project, which was put in development by the WarnerMedia streamer earlier this year, is written by Lauren Herstik (American Vandal, Pearson) and produced by Adam Goodman for Invisible Narratives and Jax Media. The comedy revolves around four lifelong “camp friends”
It’s quite clear that the availability of Warner Bros. theatrical slate on HBO Max day-and-date this year has impacted the studio’s U.S. box office results. This has either led to a film seeing a big drop in weekend 2 at the B.O. after a solid first weekend or in the case of New Line’s Sopranos prequel
Since being screened to great fanfare before the press since late August, Warner Bros. and Legendary’s $165M sci-fi epic Dune finally lands in U.S. theaters as well as 40 overseas markets, including China with an eye on a global weekend in the $70M+ range. Already, the Denis Villeneuve directed epic, which carries a Rotten Tomatoes of 87%
Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell says the beloved HBO adaptation should not serve as a guide for how women should live. “We never talk about this, but that’s something that women need to think about: You can do a lot less . . . when you have to rely on a man,” Bushnell said in
WarnerMedia has released a new clip from Peacemaker, the superhero series starring John Cena as the titular crime fighter. He’s got the looks, the car, and the best sidekick ever — all in the name of peace. An exclusive clip from @DCPeacemaker has just been debuted by #HBOMaxEurope. Coming this January to HBO Max. pic.twitter.com/imwqlWMGMX —
When it comes to WarnerMedia’s theatrical-day-date HBO Max fare, we’ve often written that whatever pales at the cinemas also sours on the service. That was not the case this weekend with the The Sopranos prequel feature The Many Saints of Newark. Even though The Many Saints of Newark wasn’t so hot at the box office with a $5M opening, the
Warner Bros’ Clint Eastwood western movie Cry Macho wasn’t tough at the box office this weekend, opening to $4.4M at 3,967 theaters in 3rd place, nor did the pic have any grit in homes on HBO Max pulling in only 693k households stateside over the weekend according to Samba TV. In a year of day-and-date theatrical-streaming
As we’ve seen with other HBO Max movies that hit theaters and the streaming service simultaneously, whenever there’s a solid number at the B.O., there’s also a solid draw in-homes. That wasn’t the case with James Wan’s giallo-inspired horror title Malignant which died at the weekend domestic B.O. with a $5.57M opening and a divided audience
Refresh for more analysis and chart With great success, comes continued great chaos for the theatrical experience this past week. On the plus side, the domestic box office is continuing its rebound during the pandemic with the second weekend of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings earning $9.7M in its second Friday, -67%
Before the industry could calculate summer’s final box office figures, they had to wait for Disney, which had the final say. Because when you have a Marvel movie like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings programmed during the final weekend of the season, and it delivers a Labor Day holiday opening of $94.67M, it
Anyone who skipped CinemaCon this year out of fear of the pandemic in Las Vegas missed a spitfire of a luncheon chat this afternoon. Not only was Patty Jenkins smashing the theatrical day & date model, and wagging a finger at exhibition over the decline in moviegoing experience, but also Paramount Domestic Distribution Boss Chris
EXCLUSIVE: Here’s some data we haven’t seen yet: The 17-day U.S. household viewership for Warner Bros. movies released this year on HBO Max, with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad registering 4.7M households through its first three weekends of release on the service. All of this comes from Samba TV which measures streaming viewership in 3M U.S.
On September 1, all eight Harry Potter films return home to HBO Max. September also brings Clint Eastwood’s latest film Cry Macho on the 17th and director James Wan’s Malignant on the 10th. Both Cry Macho and Malignant will be available in theaters and on HBO Max the same day. They will stream on the
Warner Bros went completely virtual at CinemaCon with a pre-recorded hour-long reel sans executives onstage. We understand that it had nothing do with Covid, nor any kind of day-and-date head ducking, rather their senior ranking domestic and international distribution guys were unable to attend the confab for respective personal commitments. Warners does have other members
When cinematographer Adam Bricker boarded Hacks, he found a project that embraced the character-driven storytelling he loves, and one that would challenge him in new ways. “It was one of the biggest shows that I’ve ever worked on, in terms of just the scale of the production,” he says. “With Hacks, from the get-go, it’s
EXCLUSIVE: We hear that New Line’s 8-Bit Christmas will premiere exclusively on HBO Max on Nov. 25th, in all countries where the service is available, meaning U.S. and Latin America. Here in the U.S., that date is Thanksgiving Day, a prime time for watching holiday movies on the couch. 8-Bit Christmas will be distributed by
As the pandemic rages on and the opioid crisis shows no signs of slowing down, John Oliver dedicated Sunday night’s episode of Last Week Tonight to Purdue Pharma, the company that developed the prescription painkiller, OxyContin. Oliver has covered the epidemic in two prior segments and is revisiting the topic as the CDC estimates there
EXCLUSIVE: Rutina Wesley (Queen Sugar), Mamie Gummer (True Detective), Nora Dunn (The Big Leap) and Henry G. Sanders (Queen Sugar) are among nine cast in HBO Max’s DMZ, a limited series based on the DC comic series from Ava DuVernay and Robert Patino, and Warner Bros. Television. Also joining stars Rosario Dawson and Benjamin Bratt
EXCLUSIVE: Michael Stuhlbarg is set as a lead in The Staircase, HBO Max’s limited series drama adaptation based on the true-crime docuseries. He joins previously announced Colin Firth, Toni Collette, Rosemarie DeWitt, Juliette Binoche, Parker Posey, Odessa Young, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Dane DeHaan, Olivia DeJonge and Sophie Turner. The eight-episode series from Christine director Antonio Campos
Let’s celebrate victories where we can as the domestic box office looks to get on track from the pandemic. It took 12 weekends, but finally Warner Bros./Legendary’s Godzilla vs. Kong crossed $100M at the domestic B.O., becoming the second movie to do so after Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II which did it in three weekends. GvK made
Some HBO Max subscribers received a strange email Thursday night with the subject line “Integration Test Email # 1.” The body of the email said only, “This template is used by integration tests only.” There were no attachments or images included. Given the proliferation of data breaches of late, it could have been a phishing
Third-party streaming viewership stat org Samba TV reports this morning that 693k U.S. households watched In the Heights on HBO Max in their live+3-day window. The news comes in the wake of the Warner Bros. feature musical losing the No. 1 spot at the weekend B.O. to the third session of Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II, $11.5M to
SATURDAY UPDATE: Refresh for updates While it appeared that the summer box office was dusting itself off from the pandemic over the last two weeks, both newcomers Warner Bros. highly anticipated Jon M. Chu directed Lin-Manuel Miranda musical In the Heights and Sony’s Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway are currently filing less than spectacular results respectively with a No.
“Did you miss me? I know I’ve missed you,” the mysterious titular character says in the official trailer for the upcoming Gossip Girl reboot on HBO Max. Almost a decade after the end of the original series on the CW, the omniscient “Gossip Girl” narrator (Kristen Bell), is back. Her blog is replaced with an