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The Green Lantern, a Gremlins prequel, & more: All the original genre fare on HBO Max
Plenty of sitcom fans are excited that HBO Max will have every episode of Friends when the streaming service launches next month, but HBO Max will be there for genre fans, too. WarnerMedia’s streaming service will officially go live on May 27, the company revealed on Monday.
HBO Max will, of course, be home to a bunch of Warner Bros. movies and shows (including DC films) and standard HBO titles like Game of Thrones. HBO Max will also be the streaming home of all of Hayao Miyazaki's films, which were notoriously hard to watch in the United States before. On May 7, Warner Bros. and the anime streamer Crunchyroll announced a partnership that would bring several anime series to HBO Max, including Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Rurouni Kenshin, with additional titles coming every quarter.
Eventually, though, HBO Max will further fill its streaming library with all sorts of original titles that’ll have sci-fi, fantasy, superhero, and thriller fans satisfied. With the exception of a new Looney Tunes show, none of the following series will be available when HBO Max launches, nor is there much in the way of a premiere date for the rest of them. Just keep an eye out for all these genre titles that will eventually hit the streaming service.
Adventure Time: Distant Lands: Finn the Human and Jake the Dog return for four new specials that explore more of the magical world of Ooo.
Circe: An eight-episode adaptation of Madeline Miller's novel Circe, which tells (and reimagines) the tale of the mythic Greek goddess in epic fantasy fashion.
DC Superhero High: Elizabeth Banks heads up this half-hour comedy that’s essentially a DC HS AU. (Fanfiction readers know what’s up.)
DMZ: Ava DuVernay executive-produces this adaptation of the comic book series, which imagines a near-future in which the United States has been torn apart by a second civil war. Boy, a lot of these shows seem especially dark, don’t they?
Doom Patrol: DC Universe's most bizarre, strangely wonderful series will move to HBO Max for its sophomore season.
Dune: The Sisterhood: A companion TV series to Denis Villeneuve's upcoming Dune film adaptation. According to the press release, the series will "center on the women of Bene Gesserit as they navigate the political framework of The Imperium to make way for the planet Arrakis." I have not read Dune, so I don’t know what that means. (I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m trying to remove it.)
Duster: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams is bringing three new shows to HBO Max, including this original series about a getaway driver and crime in the 1970s American Southwest.
gen:Lock: The first season of Rooster Teeth's animated sci-fi series, which boasted the vocal talents of Michael B. Jordan, Dakota Fanning, and Maisie Williams, aired on Adult Swim, but it will move to HBO Max for Season 2.
The Green Lantern: Greg Berlanti of Arrowverse fame is tackling DC’s jewelry-loving space cops in what’s promised to be the "biggest" DC show his team has made. Honestly, kinda surprised that it’s not just called "Lantern."
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai: Were you dying for a prequel series that explained the origins of the Gremlins from the '80s Gremlins movies? Well, somebody apparently was, because that’s what this is.
Justice League Dark (working title): The DC film that almost happened so many times (Doug Liman and Guillermo del Toro were both in talks to direct at various points) will end up as a J.J. Abrams-produced TV show instead. The series will focus on some of DC’s more mystical and supernatural heroes, possibly including Zatanna, Swamp Thing, and John Constantine.
Looney Tunes Cartoons: Bugs Bunny and all his many foils return for 80 new, 11-minute-long episodes of modern Looney Tunes hijinks. Hard to explain why the sight of Bugs holding a smartphone, as seen in the trailer, is so viscerally upsetting, but here we are!
Mecha Builders: An animated Sesame Street spin-off that … features the characters in a robot animation style? Hmm, OK. Sure!
Overlook: This spin-off of Stephen King's The Shining will explore the history of the infamous haunted Overlook Hotel. J.J. Abrams, who also executive-produced Hulu’s King anthology series Castle Rock, is behind Overlook as well.
Raised By Wolves: Ridley Scott executive-produces this sci-fi series about some androids who are raising human children on some distant planet and a religious dispute that almost tears the human colony apart. Sounds light.
Rules of Magic: A prequel to Alice Hoffman’s novel Practical Magic, which itself was already adapted into a cult-hit 1998 movie starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as present-day witches.
Station Eleven: HBO Max had previously announced that they were adapting Emily St. John Mandel’s incredible, gripping novel about a pandemic that wipes out most of humanity, and wouldn’t you know it but they are still making it!
Strange Adventures: This series, which will also feature Berlanti and Gotham’s John Stephens as executive producers, will tell one-hour “morality tales” starring various DC superheroes, anthology-style.
Superintelligence: Bridesmaids: Melissa McCarthy stars in this comedy movie about a woman who becomes a sentient A.I.’s test subject.
The Shelley Society: A gothic horror starring a young, fictionalized version of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley that’s been described in past releases as "Victorian X-Files." Hell yeah, let’s do this.
The Uninhabitable Earth: Adam McKay will apply the darkly funny and informative style he honed on The Big Short and Vice for this anthology series, which will explore fictional stories about what could happen if humanity continues to destroy the planet.
Tooned Out: Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis executive-produces this live-action animated comedy about a man who sees visions of classic cartoon characters from his childhood during a bad period in his life. So, like a midlife crisis version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
