Update July 3: And so it has come to pass. Insecure officially landed on Netflix, with “HBO Original†branding over the title and everything. According to Deadline, Six Feet Under, Ballers, Band of Brothers and The Pacific also have their tickets punched for the licensing train. Outside of the U.S., True Blood will also soon appear on Netflix.
Original story follows.
These are strange times for HBO: You can’t watch its shows on a streaming service called “HBO†anymore, and now the execs at its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, are going so far as to send some of those shows out to the competition. Industry insiders confirmed reports that HBO and Netflix are closing in on a deal for the streamer to take Insecure — and very likely several other fan-favorite library titles — in a new licensing agreement that was first reported by Deadline. In addition, Vulture has learned that the additional titles currently being discussed for the possible deal are Dwayne “The Rock†Johnson’s comedy Ballers, the iconic early aughts drama Six Feet Under (which aired its last episode in 2005), and a pair of Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks produced miniseries, Band of Brothers and The Pacific. But because the negotiations between Netflix and HBO are still so fluid, it’s quite possible that all of the titles being talked about won’t end up being licensed by Netflix. Whatever the final shape of a deal, it is expected the agreement would be non-exclusive, allowing titles to appear on both Netflix and WBD’s Max. Nothing’s finalized yet, and both Netflix and WBD declined to comment, but it would be the latest in a series of licensing moves under WBD CEO David Zaslav.
This new Netflix licensing deal — if it does go through — has been reported as a financial decision from WBD corporate, one that HBO execs aren’t happy about but have limited options to stop. But it’s not the first of its kind. True Blood was made available on Hulu in late 2022, becoming accessible to Hulu users without an HBO Max subscription. The Netflix deal also follows the decision earlier this year to send edited versions of Insecure to the WBD-owned basic cable channel OWN, True Blood to TNT, Silicon Valley to TBS, and other recent licensing plays, like axing and kicking pricey titles like Westworld to ad-supported channels named “WBTV†on Roku and Tubi.
Of course, HBO shows had traveled around before; in the 2000s, you could catch edited versions of Band of Brothers on the History Channel, Sex and the City on TBS and E!, and The Sopranos on A&E. And in 2014 — while HBO Go was in operation but before HBO Now launched — the company struck a licensing deal with Amazon that endured until the rollout of HBO Max in 2020, and under Zaslav’s leadership, the HBO Max app was put back on the Prime Video Channels store in late 2022.
So the news that HBO titles could be sent to a direct streaming competitor in 2023 isn’t that surprising — and it could even mean more residual opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t have existed for writers or other creatives had their shows simply lingered on Max. Ironically, it puts Netflix in the position of buying from HBO after spending years trying to compete with HBO’s prestige programming. On the other hand, for those at HBO, it might sound ominous that Zaslav is selling these shows to the arch-rivals at Netflix. This deal comes less than a month after WBD made a show of pivoting HBO Max to Just Max (with a shiny HBO section up top) and less than 24 hours after the old guard running HBO’s venerable corporate sibling Turner Classic Movies, which is now practically buried on Max’s interface, announced their departure. And while Netflix has featured a few WBD titles recently, like the animated series The Batman and Justice League Unlimited, Insecure is not an animated show originally targeted at kids: “It’s HBO.†As streaming companies rent more titles out to one another, or consolidate into fewer and fewer streaming companies, the fear is that distinctions like that will stop mattering to its corporate overlords.
This story has been updated.