One of the frustrating aspects of the impending (?) Paramount-Warner Bros merger has been that it may upend some of the interesting work underway at Paramount with its newly-installed TV team.
Since the launch of Paramount+ (and, to be real, CBS All Access before it), originals at the streamer have been pretty weak as an overall slate. I liked the work being done by Robert & Michelle King (The Good Fight and Evil), and there is certainly considerable success with the Taylor Sheridan shows (Yellowstone, Landman, etc). But beyond that, it’s been, politely, patchy.
When David Ellison bought Paramount, he brought in a new team who have been working away at overhauling the content strategy. It takes time to get a strategy and the people needed in place. It takes even more time to hear pitches and get projects up and into production. So, we haven’t yet seen the fruits of this labor. But, so far all seems pretty promising. Fingers crossed the merger doesn’t impact on their ability to commission some more interesting programming.
With the earliest of these shows working through production, head of originals Jane Wiseman has just given an interview with Deadline where there were some interesting comments that speak to the shape of what they are planning.
The female forward is in front of the camera, behind the camera, really getting women, intriguing them to come to the service and watch. And what was really exciting is that we just launched last spring The Madison and Dutton Ranch, which were from the Taylor Sheridan camp, but they over-indexed in women. So we felt like if you make shows for women, they will come.
Enter Discretion or enter Fear Not, that’s where we felt like if we could make shows for women but not alienate men; we want to make sure there’s something for everyone, and we feel like what was missing were those soapy character dramas. What I love about Discretion, just to pinpoint that one, when we first started, this was one of the first pitches that came in the door, and it was — I’m not kidding — it was a soapy female two-hander legal drama from Susannah Grant and Chandler Baker, starring Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman, and we were like, bullseye, let’s go.
With Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy both wrapping their final seasons in 2027, fans are obviously nervous about the future of Star Trek. Here she speaks about the hiring of exec Chris Parnell, who will be overseeing the franchise as part of his remit:
Well, it’s one of the reasons why Chris is here as the resident number one fan of the Star Trek franchise. And there’s so many people in this building, by the way, that are. It is our goal and it is our job to figure out what the next bounce of Star Trek is. We’re talking to a lot of writers, we are leaning on CBS Studios, and it is imperative that we figure out what the next iteration is in this franchise because it’s just too important. We also are in touch with Paramount Pictures, they have a Star Trek movie that’s in development.
It’s a no news, news sort of situation for the moment.
The article runs through each of the verticals that Paramount+ has been built on (the Sheridan shows, the Tyler Perry/BET productions, the Nickelodeon kids shows, etc) with commentary there.
Broadly, it read as positive, but there is a sense reading through it that despite there being a mandate to increase the quality of Paramount’s output, there isn’t a huge amount of actual investment being made there. It seems like a lot more of the same and some tweaks in philosophy. An indication of a budget not big enough, or is it too early to get into it? Likely a bit of both.
Australian TV mystery solved
Whatever happened to Alison Hurbert-Burns? It’s not a true crime docu-series. It is the question I’ve heard a number of times at industry events over the last few months.
Hurbert-Burns was the head of content for Australian streaming service BINGE. She left the business early last year ahead of the purchase by Euro sports giant DAZN.
But since then, there’s been radio silence. Which was weird – she was a sought-after exec who, frankly, most of us assumed she would be working for one of the big international streamers by now heading up local content.
I worked a bit with Ali as a contractor a few years back producing Skip Intro, BINGE’s weekly podcast. She was great to work with and I rate her pretty highly. We caught up for coffee shortly after she left BINGE and her lip was very tight on what the next move was for her.
Today, the mystery has been solved. She’s launching a production company. She’ll be CEO of The Set-Up, teaming with entertainment company Made Up Stories. The word ‘teaming up’ is odd as it seems like this new venture will be the Made Up Stories team, only with Ali as its new CEO. Presumably, it mostly means a pivot for the company to no longer define itself so specifically as a production company focused on telling stories that champion women.
As per Deadline:
Respected Australian commissioner Hurbert-Burns will be CEO of The Set Up, with Papandrea and Hutensky joining her as co-founders, we can reveal. Made Up Stories execs Casey Haver, Jeanne Snow and Katie Amos will round out the leadership team.
The plan is for The Set Up to package premium series with IP, talent and financing out of Australia and sell them to broadcasters and streamers in the country and internationally.
It’s worth noting that Made Up Stories, as a production company, had some pretty serious runs on the board. The decision to pivot with Ali speaks to the potential all see in this partnership.
Made Up Stories is one of the better known production companies born out of Australia, and is behind the likes of HBO’s Big Little Lies and The Undoing, Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers, Prime Video Australia’s The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and Peacock’s The Good Daughter. On the film front, it produced The Dry, which is one of Australia’s highest-grossing pics, its sequel The Dry 2 and Addition, which released this year.
Anyway, cool news and you just know that I’ll be pressuring Ali to talk to ABW when the opportunity strikes.
News Desk
A Los Angeles County study warns the Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger could cost the region nearly 4,500 film and TV jobs and $2.78 billion in economic value over three years. Read: The Hollywood Reporter
MS Now, formerly known as MSNBC, will launch a $7.99-a-month subscription “membership” service in September built around progressive activism and 24/7 access to its linear channel — the last major cable-news outlet to go direct-to-consumer. Read: Deadline
BBC Studios has strengthened its long-standing partnership with the Australia’s ABC with a deal comprising nearly 100 hours of premium first-window and fan-favourite Kids and Family titles. The deal kicks off with the new Zog series, which debuts here on Saturday and is a big topic of conversation in my house right now.
FX has ordered Legends, a meta limited series reuniting Charlie Hunnam and his Sons of Anarchy castmates — including Ron Perlman and Katey Sagal — as fictionalised versions of themselves facing a real-world threat at a fan convention. Read: thefutoncritic
Hulu has renewed Good American Family as an anthology, with a second season, this time dramatising the Lorena Bobbitt case, with Bobbitt herself consulting. Read: The Hollywood Reporter
Apple TV’s Murderbot has added 25 guest and recurring stars for its second season — among them Steve Buscemi, Michael Sheen, Wanda Sykes and Patton Oswalt — alongside returning lead Alexander Skarsgård. Read: The Hollywood Reporter
Netflix’s animated Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85 returns for its second season on 17 September, with 10 episodes picking up straight after the first-season finale. Read: Polygon
Trigger Point returns to ITV1 for a fourth season on 30 August, with Lana Washington facing “the biggest terror attack this country has seen.” Read: Radio Times
David E. Kelley has launched Live Migrations, a “slow TV” live nature series on YouTube that kicked off on 18 August with a multi-camera stream of Alaska’s sockeye salmon run, with whales and monarch butterflies to follow. Read: The Hollywood Reporter
After its first-ever Emmy nomination, the creators of the now-ended Adult Swim comedy Smiling Friends say the odds of a return are “not zero.” Read: The Hollywood Reporter
Jason Statham‘s action feature Mutiny briefly appeared in full on US Prime Video for an hour or two ahead of its Friday cinema release, in what looks like an accidental leak rather than a stunt. Read: Dark Horizons
David Krumholtz has clarified he isn’t retiring but is putting his acting career on hold, after an earlier social-media post sparked retirement speculation. I’d think of this like the Steven Soderbergh retirement from filmmaking. Read: Variety
Dutch children’s puppet show De Fabeltjeskrant is being revived, with 1,600 restored episodes heading to YouTube and a new CGI series set to be shopped to buyers at MIPCOM in October. Read: Deadline
Trailer Park
Best Medicine returns for season 2 on Fox this fall.
Dalliance debuts on Paramount+ on Aug 27.
A new Australian drama of love, lies and second chances, with an all-star local cast.
Untold: Mr. T: I Pity The Fool debuts on Netflix on Sept 8.
The Untold sports-doc series traces Laurence Tureaud’s rise to become Mr. T, one of the most unlikely and beloved icons in entertainment.
Earle Meets World debuts on Netflix on Sept 4.
Gen Z social-media star Alix Earle offers an unfiltered look at her life and blended family, capturing the real-time messiness of a young woman in transition.
Physical 100: Mexico is coming soon to Netflix.
The global competition franchise heads to Mexico, where 100 competitors — wrestlers, boxers, MMA fighters, Olympians and more — battle in a pre-Hispanic arena to find the most complete physique.
The Grand Tour returns with a new presenting line-up on Prime Video on Sept 4.
Betty La Fea: Uglier Than Ever returns for season 3 on Prime Video on Aug 28.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
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