HBO Max is shutting down most of its original projects in Europe. The service continues the adventure only in Spain and France.
HBO Max is ending its original production across virtually all of Europe, according to Variety. The video streaming service has confirmed that it will no longer produce original content in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Central Europe, the Netherlands and Turkey. Only Spain and France remain. The move is part of a larger plan by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery is looking to cut its operating costs by $3 billion after spinning off from AT&T.
HBO Max is ending most of its original projects in Europe
“We are revisiting our current stance on existing services,”a Variety spokesperson said. “As part of this process, we have decided to remove a limited amount of original content from HBO Max and terminate our original HBO Max production initiatives in the Nordic and Central European countries. We have also terminated our activities in new territories such as the Netherlands and Turkey, which we started last year.”
Some of the service’s most popular series, such as Lust (Sweden) and Kamikaze (Denmark), come from the Nordic countries and other affected regions. In addition to ending these productions, HBO Max will remove them from its worldwide catalog, along with the Hungarian drama The Informant. Projects that are already in production and others that have already been approved will continue to develop, but they may be sold to other platforms, and Warner is only working as a simple producer.
The service only continues the adventure in Spain and France.
Content production for streaming is very profitable in Europe, with Netflix and other platforms meeting the required quota of 30% local content in the largest markets in the region. The announcement of HBO Max could spoil everything, as “layouts are to be expected in [HBO Max’s] European operations,”Variety said.
Perhaps more troubling, “a similar move for HBO Max is starting to happen across all territories where the service exists, which also covers the United States, Latin America and parts of Europe,”the American magazine added. Along with the recently announced layoffs at Netflix, this is the first bleak sign in the streaming era.