An Hbo: Last News

HBO is interested in casting I May Destroy‘s Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape in their upcoming Harry Potter TV series, Deadline understands. However, no formal offers have been made to the actor nor has his team conversed with HBO suits about a potential deal.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor HBO is no longer giving away free next-day looks to the popular “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” comedy talk show. With the Season 11 premiere of the show on Feb. 18, HBO has ceased sharing the main feature and other segments from “Last Week Tonight” on the show’s YouTube channel the following day.

On Mondays while HBO‘s Last Week Tonight is in season, host/executive producer John Oliver takes to Twitter to post the main story segment from the previous night’s episode as it becomes available on YouTube.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Bill Maher will soon be operating by some “New Rules” — and not just the ones he makes up in the signature segment of his HBO program. The comedian and commentator plans to re-start production of “Real Time” on HBO without writers, the first of TV’s phalanx of late-night hosts to try and do so despite the continuing Hollywood strikes by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA. “Real Time is coming back, unfortunately, sans writers or writing.” Maher said on social media Wednesday night.

“The Idol” will not be returning to HBO for a second season.

EXCLUSIVE: The upcoming second season of HBO’s House of the Dragon will consist of eight episodes, two fewer than Season 1 of the Critics Choice Award-winning Game of Thrones prequel. It is part of a long-term plan for the show, which includes HBO mulling a green light for a third season, I have learned.

Christopher Vourlias Production is underway in Romania and Hungary on the new HBO Max Original “Spy/Master,” a spy drama series set during the height of the Cold War that will star British Independent Film Award-nominated actor Alec Secăreanu (“God’s Own Country,” “RUXX”). The 6 x 50’ series, which was the winner of HBO’s national screenwriting competition in Romania, marks one of the streaming service’s final productions from Central and Eastern Europe. As Variety first reported in July, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery will no longer produce originals for HBO Max in the Nordics (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland), Central Europe, the Netherlands and Turkey, and will also remove some content from its platform in order to free up licensing deals elsewhere.

HBO has canceled the series The Time Traveler’s Wife after one season.

Christopher Vourlias From the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker David France (“How to Survive a Plague”) could sense the scale of the threat looming on the horizon. A long-time health reporter who has spent decades documenting the battle against HIV and AIDS, he also knew that it would be up to science to lead the world from the brink of an unprecedented human catastrophe.The race to develop and rollout a COVID-19 vaccine has been the defining story of recent memory, and it was the director’s need to document “the great unseen work” performed in laboratories across the world that led to his latest feature, “How to Survive a Pandemic.” “This is the largest scientific undertaking of our lifetimes,” France tells Variety, “and it deserved to be chronicled.” “How to Survive a Pandemic,” which world premieres this week at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, is a kaleidoscopic portrait of the world’s response to COVID-19 told through the eyes of leading scientists, lawmakers, activists, healthcare workers, and everyday figures on the pandemic’s frontlines.

George R.R. Martin is opening up about House of the Dragon.