On today’s episode of the “Daily Variety” podcast, Variety’s Rebecca Rubin unpacks Universal Pictures’ risky decision to split “Wicked” into two parts and how it paid off with a record-breaking hit. And with parent company Warner Bros. Discovery once again in sale mode, Jennifer Mars gives us an update on the mood at HBO.
Rubin explains that Wicked: For Good, which opened with $150 million, was by definition a Quadrant 4 hit. “When you look at those numbers, $150 million domestically and over $200 million worldwide, it resonates just about everywhere. But what stood out to me were two parts of it. A few years ago, Universal released two “Wicks” movies. “When we announced that we were going to split it into two parts, a lot of people, including myself, were very skeptical about what that decision would be, because it’s already dangerous to split a movie into two parts. And musicals are a very polarizing genre,” Rubin says. “So it was a big gamble for Universal to make not just one successful big-budget musical, but two successful ones every other year. It’s very reassuring now that it feels like that decision paid off, at least financially speaking, because they have another big opportunity.”
Regarding HBO’s presentation, Maas said HBO and HBO Max chief Casey Bloys announced an impressive lineup of new and returning shows, with a focus on delivering a steady stream of premieres throughout 2026.
“They’ve given us a complete roadmap, which is very impressive, because I think in the last few years that they’ve done things like this, they’ve done very little that they’re really proud of. But this year is going to be a really stacked year. It’s just one thing after another,” Maas says.
“There’s going to be a new season of ‘House of the Dragon’ coming out in the summer. ‘Knights of the Seven Kingdoms’ — which is a prequel to ‘Game of Thrones,’ which is coming out in January. They’re renewing Tim Robinson’s ‘The Chair Company,’ “I Love LA has also been renewed. And in the footage they showed, we got a first look at a lot of upcoming shows. There’s no new Harry Potter show yet because they’re still filming,” Casey said a bit about that. And he said there are also plans to film those seasons as close as possible to the kids in advance of their roles. We got to see the Greg Berlanti and Green Lantern show “Lantern,” which had been in the works for a while. So, one of the interesting things is that so many shows that we’ve been writing for years, some of them took this long to come to fruition. ” Mars said.
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