With 130 million subscribers, 112 markets around the world, successful launches in Italy and Germany at the beginning of the year, and operations due to kick off in the UK and Ireland tomorrow, HBO Max is continuing its rise based on the widely recognised artistic quality of its products, which has been confirmed by significant successes (such as Euphoria, the third season of which is due to drop in April). Series Mania Forum, the professional arm of the 16th Series Mania Festival, invited the platform’s head of original programming, Sarah Aubrey, to shed light on her strategy for securing original, international productions capable of winning over local audiences without jeopardising HBO’s trademark creativity.

Raising the bar incredibly high, creatively speaking, taking as much time as necessary (even if it means the works it develops aren’t ultimately made) to ensure they have the best narrative material possible before entering into production, potentially putting out a pilot episode, not banking on international success for local productions, trusting in the HBO teams in different countries who know their market and creators well, but nevertheless aiming for wide-ranging launches… The former producer underscored the diversity of HBO’s recent international successes in the field of series, notably including French work The Seduction, Poland’s The Eastern Gate, Italy’s Portobello – The Fall of Enzo Tortora [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Marco Bellocchio
ficha de la serie] (unveiled in the Venice Film Festival), Brazil’s Scars of Beauty and Mexico’s Chespirito: Sin querer queriendo.

Sarah Aubrey primarily announced that HBO Max had closed a first-look deal on projects initiated by Spain’s Domingo Corral (who left his role as head of original fiction at Movistar Plus+ last year after a decade of success). A project already in development by the duo Alberto Rodríguez – Rafael Cobos (The Anatomy of a Moment [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la serie]) is also in the pipeline, which is set in Spain in the early 1980s when the country is in the throes of transitioning to democracy, a period marked by an upsurge in crime and a record number of bank robberies. To combat the fear felt by the general population, a police unit is created, composed of Francoist officers endowed with extensive powers and operating with near-total impunity. Following a theft, a young petty criminal known as Nani is wrongfully arrested by the authorities and subsequently disappears…

In Germany, meanwhile, HBO Max have opted to join forces with Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar (the creators of the Netflix series Dark) on a series created by Matija Dragojević, produced by their outfit Dark Ways, and already being shot. Starring Lisa Vicari and Norbert Troschitz, the story follows a police investigation into a series of ritual murders inspired by the cruel and macabre stories in Heinrich Hoffmann’s children’s book, Struwwelpeter (1844). A short, unreleased and highly atmospheric trailer of the series was screened.

Sarah Aubrey also took advantage of an opportunity to reveal the first images from the Harry Potter series which is currently being shot, as well as extracts from an upcoming Polish series called Proud (telling the story of a young gay man faced with a family tragedy who finds himself responsible for a baby to which he grows so attached he’ll fight to keep him). On the Spanish side, she likewise mentioned the upcoming second season of Rage [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la serie], notably starring Carmen Maura, and, on the German side, 4 Blocks Zero (the prequel to the famous series 4 Blocks), and, last but not least, the launch on 27 March of the French series Privilèges (a 6 x 52-minute series created by Marie Monge and Vladimir de Fontenay, and toplined by Manon Bresch and Melvil Poupaud, telling a story unfurling behind the scenes in a glitzy Parisian hotel.