On the plus side, two of 2024's biggest shows are officially confirmed to still be arriving next year.
Just as Hollywood was beginning to pick up steam again post-pandemic, they were hit by the one-two punch of the Writer's Strike AND the Actor's Strike. While the writers are now officially back to work, the actors are still very much on the picket line, which means 99.999999% of productions out of Hollywood still can't move ahead, or even be properly promoted. (
There are some exceptions.)
And so with that, every major Hollywood movie and TV production and distribution house must look at their upcoming line-up and give it a big reshuffle. Stuff that hasn't finished filming yet, or hasn't even started yet, needs to be pushed back a good bit, with the finished stuff now with wider spaces between them, to spread out the content over a wider release window.
With that in mind, Casey Bloys - chairman and CEO at HBO - has confirmed (via Deadline) that three of 2024's biggest shows have been officially pushed back to 2025. So anyone excited for next year's line-up should probably lower their expectations a bit.
The White Lotus Season 3, which moves the action to Thailand, after the events in Hawaii in White Lotus Season One and Sicily in White Lotus Season Two. The new season was due to arrive in 2024, but has been officially pushed to 2025.
Welcome To Derry, the prequel to the hit horror movies It: Chapter One and It: Chapter Two, was due for Halloween 2024, but will now likely be Halloween 2025.
Euphoria Season 3 has also been delayed to 2025, which will mean a three-year gap between seasons. Creator Sam Levinson was busy in between with
The Idol, the worst reviewed show in HBO's history.
White Lotus and Euphoria aren't the only returning seasons mentioned
Other updates include
The Last Of Us Season 2, which the HBO CEO remarked they are hoping can start production in early 2024, which would mean a 2025 release at the earliest, although this doesn't count as a delay, as TLOU S2 never had a set release date. Reports claim that the major new cast additions were made before the actor's strike, but cannot be announced until after the strike ends.
On the plus side, Bloys did confirm that two of HBO's biggest 2024 shows will still be arriving in 2024... albeit maybe not quite as early in the year as had previously been expected.
House of the Dragon Season 2 will officially land in Summer 2024, as production on the show was able to continue through the strikes as the cast is largely English and not under the same contracts as their Hollywood counterparts. Bloys also revealed that another Game Of Thrones prequel series,
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, is hoping to start production in Spring 2024.
And finally,
The Penguin, the Colin Farrell-fronted spin-off show from Robert Pattinson's The Batman, which has been pushed from Spring 2024 to Autumn 2024. Bloys talked about the concept of superhero fatigue, to which he responded:
"I don’t know that it’s necessarily tentpole fatigue as much as it is a sameness of storytelling. I think the key, even within DC, is trying to tell different stories in different styles, to not try to do the same show over and over and over again. I would say Peacemaker is a very different show tonally than The Penguin. So, there’s not a uniformity to the storytelling and I think that helps."
As a final cherry on top, Bloys also revealed that 2024 will bring a surprise sequel to one of the most jaw-dropping documentaries of all time. More on
that here.
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