Warner Bros. Discovery Looking To License HBO Library Series to Netflix, Issa Rae’s ‘Insecure’ Thrown in the Mix
In a shocking move, Warner Bros. Discovery may be looking into licensing part of its HBO catalog, including Issa Rae’s Insecure, to one of its direct streaming competitors, Netflix, according to a story on Deadline.
Apparently, the David Zaslav-run company is packaging a set of HBO original library programming, currently streaming on Max, and shopping it to Netflix. No deal has been closed, but the group would include the Issa Rae hit HBO comedy series Insecure, which wrapped its fifth and final season in December of 2021. Others are also being discussed, but apparently, they would all still be allowed to stream on Max.
This would be part of David Zaslav’s plan to continue to monetize the company’s library when they are not being used to lure subscribers in. Last year, they already announced plans to shop the animated series Batman: Caped Crusader elsewhere, which eventually landed on Amazon. However, this is the first time HBO would be showing its original programming in a direct SVOD competitor in a decade.
It’s definitely a big move for a network that has survived for so long based on its quality control measures, putting out shows they firmly believe can make an impact on society. In the span of around eight months, that just gave them four of the most talked-about shows of the past five years — House of the Dragon, The White Lotus, The Last of Us, and Succession. This isn’t necessarily a reflection that they don’t believe in Insecure or other shows like it, but rather that the numbers they are seeing on Max are not enough to pay residuals to the people that worked on them.
However, this is also a way of diminishing the brand, and probably why executives in high offices at HBO are pushing back against the deal. Their motto has been for three decades very simple: “Do you want to see the best TV shows out there? You have to pay us”.
This is certainly going to make waves in the streaming wars, especially with so many changes as of late. There has been a pushback against the streaming model over the past few months bigger than we could have anticipated when it started to thrive, mostly based on how studios are hiding the numbers from the people that make them millions of dollars every year. Disney’s decision to remove part of its catalog, including the six-month-old Willow series, entirely from the platform also set a bad precedent.
As theaters go back to business as usual and the theatrical windows for certain movies are wider than ever, we could be at a tipping point for the model. Licensing out programming to competitors could be beneficial in the short term for HBO but very hurtful in the long run.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
