Happiness and Crackhead are leading the charge for regional content on local streamer, but there are hopes to commission Australian titles.
HBO Max is now over a year old in Australia and yet to announce an Australian commission.
And while there are hopes to address that gap, so far it is New Zealand acquisitions which are leading the charge for regional content.
John Beohm, Senior Director, Content HBO Max Australia & NZ, said, “We’ve been really lucky to pick up some great New Zealand stuff. The New Zealanders are producing some really interesting and distinct content at the moment – we had Happiness Season One last year, and we will have Season Two later this year.”
Happiness stars Rebecca Gibney as the mother of Harry McNaughton, playing Charlie, a rising Broadway director who helps her amateur theatre production and features original songs by composer Luke Di Somma.
“It’s just a beautiful series. It’s hard to pull off a musical, but I definitely think they’ve done it.”
“The other one is Crackhead which again just feels if HBO had made a New Zealand show it would be Crackhead.”
Creator Holly Shervey stars as party girl Frankie who enters a ‘luxury’ clinic but soon discovers that it’s less sanctuary and more a run-down lock-up full of fellow misfits.
“It told a really distinct story. I almost got flashes of Wentworth a little bit when I was watching. I don’t know if that one’s returning, but we’re really happy with how that’s gone,” says Beohm.
“As much as HBO and Warner Brothers supply an amazing slate to us, there are still gaps in the schedule. We’re out there trawling the world looking for distinctive, interesting content that can sit alongside HBO. Thankfully New Zealand’s provided a few of them to us recently.”
That leaves an Australian commission as the next big turning point in the life of the local streamer.
“Obviously streaming quotas have come in, but it’s always been our ambition to have local content. Whether it’s Stan or Binge or anyone, I don’t think any local service thinks they’re going to reach their potential without local content. We feel the same. So, hopefully we’ll have more to talk about soon,” he assures.
Meanwhile what is the HBO Max programming strategy for releasing content? Is it a binge drop or a week by week proposition?
“In terms of content that we acquire or that we pick up, we’re usually at the mercy of the home broadcaster.” he continues.
“It’s rare that we would want to change that, just because everyone gets upset, and there’s usually not a good enough reason to not go day and date with the US.
“HBO for 50 years, have been rolling out shows weekly but they’ve continued that into the streaming world, and honestly, it’s kind of my preferred way to watch a show.
“I think you actually can get a lot more buzz and noise out of a show by going weekly. I think about shows like Succession or Heated Rivalry, and if you just drop the whole thing at once, those really big moments will get lost. So, weekly is definitely our strategy at this stage.”
And when does premium content drop, is there a preferred day of the week or time of day?
“Most HBO content goes out Sunday night in America, so Monday morning in Australia. It’s either between 11am and 1pm so it works out really well for us, in that you can watch it at lunch, or it’s ready for you when you get home,” says Beohm.
“The only consistent thing that’s different to that is our big films which usually go out, I think, at 3am in the US. So that means it’s like 5pm the same day for us.”