HBO shifts course and pins hopes on fantasy series

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — A "Game of Thrones" prequel series just wrapped up filming in Belfast. An impressive 137 Emmy nominations last week can't be a bad thing. But it’s hard not to sense that HBO is changing before our eyes.

Since AT&T acquired HBO'S parent company Time Warner last year for $85 billion, the network has increased its overall hours of original programming by more than a third, expanding into Monday nights with "Chernobyl," "Gentleman Jack" and "Years and Years."

As Warnermedia prepares to launch a streaming service (dubbed HBO Max to capitalize on the brand) to compete with Netflix, Disney, et al., some longtime executives have departed — including chief executive Richard Plepler and documentary head Sheila Nevins.

HBO'S chief of programing, Casey Bloys, told reporters Wednesday at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour here that more HBO doesn't mean less quality.

"The big challenge was to make sure that by doing (more) we aren't just filling hours to fill hours," Bloys said. "In the first half of 2019, we have a lot more programming and there's not one show that we have aired that I wouldn't have aired, you know, two years ago or five years ago."

The big question HBO viewers always have is what's next. "Game of Thrones" is done. "Veep" is done. There's no such thing as a "Chernobyl 2."

Fantasy seems to be the network's ongoing obsession, with two big shows this fall built around complicated multiverse sagas. In October, the network will premiere creator Damon Lindelof's divergent take on "Watchmen," the culthit comic book from the 1980s.

Critics screened the "Watchmen" pilot episode Tuesday night, but HBO begged us to reserve judgment for now, at least in print. Suffice it to say Lindelof has taken "Watchmen's" concept and aesthetic in a surprising direction that, among other things, involves the 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma, race massacre and the rise of vigilante white supremacists in a parallel-reality America of 2019. Oscar and Emmy winner Regina King stars.

HBO'S other lavish fantasy offering (co-produced with the BBC) is "His Dark Materials," based on author Philip Pullman's trilogy of young-adult novels set in a parallel world where animals are manifestations of human souls and a heroic 12-year-old girl named Lyra (Dafne Keen) uncovers a plot involving stolen children that’s linked to a mysterious substance called Dust.

I probably got half of that wrong — the pilot episode hurls viewers into the deep end and expects them to swim — but I have time to bone up before the show premieres in November. It stars James Mcavoy, Ruth Wilson and Lin-manuel Miranda.

Both shows make me wonder if HBO is in danger of nerding out to an extreme. Maybe they could throw the rest of us a third season of "Big Little Lies"?

Don't count on it, Bloys said.

"To me, on the face of it, there's no obvious place (for the story) to go," he said. "That said, if they all came to me and said, 'We have the greatest take: Listen to this,' I would certainly be open to it.”