{"id":100554,"date":"2025-08-27T10:06:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T10:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/100554\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T10:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T10:06:09","slug":"euphoria-was-pitched-as-game-of-thrones-with-teenagers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/100554\/","title":{"rendered":"Euphoria was pitched as Game Of Thrones with teenagers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Picture an HBO show containing the following scene: a woman considered powerful in her realm threatens violence upon a former ally after she learns that that ally usurped something she thought was rightfully hers. If you thought of Game Of Thrones<\/a>, well, you\u2019re right, there\u2019s dozens of scenes like that. But there\u2019s also a few in Euphoria<\/a>\u2014specifically the scene<\/a> where Rue (Zendaya) lets slip that Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) fucked her best friend Maddy\u2019s (Alexa Demie) ex-boyfriend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The parallel in the level of drama between these two shows is somewhat intentional. In a new story published in The New Yorker<\/a>, A24\u2019s head of television, Ravi Nandan, recalled a dinner he had with Euphoria creator Sam Levinson early in the development process. Levinson had previously pitched the series, which had already been picked up by HBO, as one that showed \u201cempathy for drug addicts\u201d as Levinson had previously struggled with addiction himself. At the dinner, though, he further laid out his vision. \u201cI want this to be No. 1,\u201d Nandan remembers the writer saying. \u201cSo, what works on HBO?\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, it was Game Of Thrones. \u201cThere\u2019s a ton of nudity. There\u2019s a lot of internal family drama. There\u2019s a lot of social, political drama between everyone backstabbing each other and trying to fuck each other over. And there\u2019s violence. I\u2019m just gonna do all of that, with teen-agers,\u201d Levinson explained. Nandan recalls thinking, \u201cThat is insane.\u201d (The New Yorker\u2018s emphasis.) But at the same time, he thought, \u201cO.K.! I want to go on that ride with you!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a big swing that paid off in spades. In 2022, the A24 and HBO co-production became HBO\u2019s second-most watched show<\/a> since 2004\u2014second only behind (you guessed it!) Game Of Thrones. The show also catapulted many of its young leads to superstardom, with multiple appearing in other A24 projects throughout the years. (Jacob Elordi starred in Priscilla, Hunter Schafer will appear in David Lowery\u2019s Mother Mary, etc.) It\u2019s currently gearing up for its long-gestating third season<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sharon Stone “Euphoric” to officially join Euphoria season 3<\/a>Rosal\u00eda, Marshawn Lynch amongst Euphoria season 3 newbies<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, Euphoria isn\u2019t the only production the studio has applied this sort of \u201cthrow everything at the wall and see what sticks\u201d methodology to. \u201cThere are a lot of companies that are good at, you know, optioning a book with no one attached and saying it\u2019s an open writing assignment and ten people are gonna pitch. We\u2019ve tried that\u2014it\u2019s never worked,\u201d Nandan said. \u201cWe\u2019re much better at fostering an original idea in someone, and that just takes time.\u201d You can read more about A24\u2019s unique approach in the full New Yorker article<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Picture an HBO show containing the following scene: a woman considered powerful in her realm threatens violence upon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-100554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}