July 5, 2022
HBO Max is halting original productions across most of Europe. The streaming platfom confirmed that it will no longer produce originals in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Turkey, Central Europe and the Netherlands, leaving just Spain and France unscathed.
The movie is part of a plan from parent Warner Bros Discovery to cut some $3 billion (€2.92bn) in costs following its split from AT&T.
In a statement released to Variety, HBO Max said: “As we continue to work on combining HBO Max and discovery+ into one global streaming service showcasing the breadth of content across Warner Bros Discovery, we are reviewing our current content proposition on the existing services. As part of this process, we have decided to remove a limited amount of original programming from HBO Max, as well as ceasing our original programming efforts for HBO Max in the Nordics and Central Europe. We have also ceased our nascent development activities in the newer territories of Netherlands and Turkey, which had commenced over the past year”.
“Our commitment to these markets has not changed,” the statement added. “We will continue to commission local content for Warner Bros Discovery’s linear networks in these regions and we remain substantial acquirers of local third-party content for use on our streaming services”.
Affected titles include Lust (Sweden) and Kamikaze (Denmark). On top of halting production, HBO Max will reportedly remove these titles along with The Informant (Hungary) from its service. Projects already in will reportedly continue, but are likely to be sold to other networks / platforms.
Redundancies are now expected across HBO Max’s European business.