HBO Max is ceasing most of its original productions in Europe. The service continues the adventure only in Spain and France.
HBO Max ceases its original productions practically everywhere in 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 aims to reduce its operating costs by $3 billion following its separation from AT&T.
HBO Max ceases most of its original productions in Europe
“We are reviewing our current position on existing services,” a spokesperson told Variety in a statement. “As part of this process, we have decided to remove a limited amount of original content from HBO Max and to discontinue our original production initiatives for HBO Max in Northern and Central European countries. We have also ceased our fledgling activities in new territories such as the Netherlands and Turkey that 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 ceasing these productions, HBO Max will remove them from its worldwide catalog, just like the Hungarian drama The Informant. Projects already in production and others already approved will continue their development – but these can be sold to other platforms, with Warner only working as a simple producer -.
The service only continues the adventure in Spain and France
Producing content for streaming is very lucrative in Europe, with Netflix and other platforms meeting the required 30% local content quota in the region’s biggest markets. The announcement of HBO Max could come to spoil all this, insofar as “layoffs are to be expected in the European activity [de HBO Max]”, specified Variety.
Perhaps more worryingly, “a similar move for HBO Max is starting to happen in all territories where the service exists, which also covers the United States, Latin America and parts of Europe,” added the American magazine. Along with Netflix’s recently announced layoffs, this is the first dark sign in this era of streaming.
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