Some HBO shows may soon be coming to Netflix

After more than a year of brutal cancellations and layoffs at HBO, it looks like Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s dedication to quick revenue is as strong as ever. Warner Bros. Discovery May License HBO Original Series to Netflix deadline reported yesterday, deadlineWhile sources claim it is a financial move, HBO’s old leaders disagree, but it is necessary to strengthen the bottom line. He also says that it is possible that the deal could come out soon.

The show that is rumored to be the subject of the deal is Issa Rae vulnerable, which ran on HBO for five seasons, ending in December 2021. Other shows will come after that. The deal will not be exclusive; WBD will still be able to show the series on its own platform Max.

This wouldn’t be the first TV or movie to air on two different streaming networks. thank you for some contractual stupidityyou can currently see Avatar: The Way of Water On both Disney Plus and Max. But this will be the first major streaming deal for WBD since it sold a package of canceled shows to free ad-supported television (FAST) networks including Roku and Tubi earlier this year. Those shows also include recently canceled shows done by and unaired episodes of Joss Whedon series The Nevers.

While it is unusual for a streaming service owner to sell content to competitors, for years, it was par for the course. In 2014, Warner Bros. licensed some of its biggest shows to Amazon Prime Video, including the Sopranos And Wire, And before that, it syndicated edited versions of some shows to TBS and TV Guide. Selling shows to competing services has slowed in recent years as streaming services try to build their own fiefdom of content.

But last year, Zaslav made it clear that his company “open for businessAnd they won’t sacrifice their bottom line just to secure more Max customers. “We have a lot of material sitting around just for theoretical reasons,” CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said at a Bank of America event last year.

The current rumored licensing deal follows the recent rebranding of WBD and the relaunch of HBO Max as Simply Max, which saw a new pricing tier for 4K video and there were some indications that the rollout was hurried, resulting in an embarrassing credit problem that WBD was forced to settle. Apologies as this lumped writers, directors and everyone else under the same “producer” title, which angered the striking WGA writers. (Disclosure: ledgeThe editorial staff is also unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East.)

There are many reasons to dislike Zaslav’s “open for business” approach, but it’s rare to be able to watch a high-quality show like HBO on multiple platforms because first-party content gets dumped into streaming foxholes. And it’s a better story than a movie that people put time and work into getting canceled for tax reasons.