A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
HBO
Warner Bros., currently in an acquisition battle between Paramount and Netflix, has reported earnings which include $252 million in net losses, but big boosts in other areas, including film (up 54% from movies like Sinners, Weapons, Minecraft and Superman), but especially on HBO.
- Industry, the “Severance meets Euphoria” hedge fund series, is about to end a stellar season 4, with viewership up 30% from season 3. It’s just been announced that Industry has been renewed for a fifth and final season, attempting to go out on top.
- The Pitt, the insta-hit medical drama, has seen its season-over-season numbers rise by a whopping 50%, the show seemingly on its way to being endlessly renewed and something HBO plans to air every single January, a rarity in the streaming space, especially for a 15-episode series.
- The just-concluded Game of Thrones prequel, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, has been averaging 24 million viewers per episode, and that’s growing. We previously learned that it was the third-largest debut for an HBO original, behind House of the Dragon and The Last of Us. It is presently the highest-scored Game of Thrones-based series overall on Rotten Tomatoes.
- Heated Rivalry isn’t mentioned here, but late in 2025, it became a widely-watched cultural phenomenon that still persists, and season 2 is on the way.
HBO is now looking ahead to the release of Euphoria season 3 in April, which may do well, but it has been four years since season 2, which does not seem likely to help.
House of the Dragon season 3 will release in June, ahead of season 4, which will end the show at some unspecified point in the future. Season 2 was generally considered lackluster, and it hopes to reverse that narrative with a more blockbuster season 3 and some significant source material-based plot developments. Though it seems unlikely it will be received as well as A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a series that will now air yearly, thanks to just six short episodes and a low budget.
Despite Warner Bros’ overall business wavering back and forth, it’s easy to see why it’s a key acquisition target for both Netflix and Paramount, given its hugely popular slate of movies and shows. Many worried that Netflix would absorb all of it into its own streaming service, all those shows and movies, but the company has committed to keeping its theatrical release plan intact, and keeping HBO (Max) as a separate app. At least for some period of time. We’ll see what happens next with that fierce business battle.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.