With COVID-19 causing a disaster for the film and TV industry, many have assumed the intended spring launch of HBO Max has gone off course. Well, that’s not the case and the streaming platform is apparently still intending to debut next month. Moreover, in another show of confidence, HBO MAX announced three new one-hour dramas from J.J. Abrams and Katie McGrath’s Bad Robot Productions and Warner Bros. Television Group. This partnership is the first Bad Robot projects under the exclusive, wide-ranging content collaboration partnership they formed with WarnerMedia in fall 2019. Many had speculated that Warner Bros. and J.J. Abrams would equal a Superman project (Abrams almost directed “Superman: Flyby” in the early aughts), but that’s only half right.
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There is a D.C. series in the works from Bad Robot, but it’s not Man Of Steel related. The most notable of these three announcements will be a major series based on D.C. characters in the “Justice League Dark” Universe. No details were revealed, but this will be heartening for fans as both Guillermo del Toro and Doug Liman tried to make “Justice League Dark” movies. The main question is whether the heroes, universe, and stories will connect to the DCU movie-verse, but that’s too early to tell right now.
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Justice League Dark membership has changed in different iterations, but it generally features supernatural heroes— John Constantine, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, Shade, the Changing Man, and Zatanna—facing off against otherworldly foes.
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The second series, “Overlook,” is a horror-thriller series inspired by and featuring iconic characters from Stephen King‘s masterpiece “The Shining,” and sounds a lot like the project filmmaker Mark Romanek was developing at one point. “Overlook” explores the untold, terrifying stories of the most famous haunted hotel in American fiction. The project reunites Bad Robot, King and WBTV, who previously collaborated on the acclaimed psychological-horror series “Castle Rock” for Hulu.
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The third series “Duster,” is to be co-written by J.J. Abrams & LaToya Morgan. Set in the 1970’s Southwest, the life of a gutsy getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate goes from awful to wildly, stupidly, dangerously awful. Morgan is currently a writer on “The Walking Dead.” Previously, she was a co-executive producer and writer of AMC’s “Into the Badlands” and “TURN: Washington’s Spies,” and was a writer for NBC’s “Parenthood” and Showtime’s “Shameless.” Produced by Warner Bros. Television. All of the Bad Robot series for HBO Max will be executive produced by J.J. Abrams and its Head of Television, Ben Stephenson. Rachel Rusch Rich, Bad Robot’s Executive Vice President of Television will serve as a co-executive producer. Warner Bros. International Television Distribution will be the global distributor for the programs.
No dates for any of the shows have been given and one suspects that with coronavirus lockdown still in full effect, the earliest we’ll get any of these shows is mid-2021 at best.