Gerhard Zeiler is responsible for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) businesses across 200 territories, and has strategic oversight for the group’s brands and direct-to-consumer products outside the US.
Session chair Nina Hossain: WarnerMedia and Discovery completed their merger just six months ago. What’s your big vision for WBD?
HBO Max, which launched in the US in May 2020, is set to roll out across Europe. The streaming service is scheduled to arrive in the Nordics and Spain this month, with other European countries to follow in the first quarter of 2022. But the UK is not included, because HBO content – including big-hitters such as Succession, Gangs of London and The White Lotus – is distributed exclusively via Sky until 2025.
Casey Bloys, Chief Content Officer for HBO and HBO Max, will discuss programming strategy and goals to expand WarnerMedia’s slate of originals.
Almost exactly two years ago, I was invited by this magazine to muse on what was then a wave of “sad-coms” or “dramedies”, those shows playing not quite for laughs but more for wry, sympathetic chuckles at the vicissitudes of life. The success of Detectorists, Back to Life, Don’t Forget the Driver, Ricky Gervais’s After Life, Mum and This Country served to prove that small-screen gags would, from now on, be accompanied by gulps in the throat.
The series is set to be written by Steve Dildarian, creator of The Life and Times of Tim, and executive produced by Dildarian and animator Nick Weidenfeld.
The animation series follows Tom and the grown-ups in his life, who have the best intentions but struggle to set a good example for him to follow.
Resisting against being corrupted by the immoral behaviours of the adults around him, just leaving the house causes a war against the bad influences that are everywhere.
Starstruck follows Rose (Matafeo), a twenty-something millennial living in London struggling to juggle two dead-end jobs to make ends meet.
An awkward morning-after-the-night-before is made even worse when she discovers she has accidentally slept with a film star, setting in motion a series of complications she could never have imagined.
Matafeo is a comedian and actress who won the Best Comedy Show at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards 2018 for her solo show, Horndog.
