HBO Max Orders Two New Drama Pilots Following 'The Pitt' Model

“They’re a really useful, important tool, because we’re not running a bake-off in an old school network way, we are very particular about what we pick up to pilot. We’ve really done the work on the scripts and the shape of the season, so it’s not, let’s shoot eight and pick up one, that’s not the intention. That said, especially when you’re being ambitious — one thing I love about The Pitt, and we definitely want to continue to see in these shows, is these very fresh faces and building out big ensembles and getting a chance in a pilot to see who’s popping, what’s working, how do you shape the show accordingly. It’s just a very important proof of concept in all those respects, and an educational tool for the showrunners, who are building something that they have to make 15 episodes of and return very quickly, and that’s just a different kind of engine. So I think for all of us, both creative and practical purposes, it’s a great tool that we’re excited to take advantage of.”

“I’m not going to opine about the budgets. But yes. Part of it is not just the money spent on the show, but part of it is the nature of the show itself. To make 15 episodes, you have to build a lean and mean machine to do that. So the goal is to replicate what John did so well on The Pitt but also what TV used to be, it just hasn’t been that for a while. The other great part of it for us is we have wonderful partners in Warner Brothers, and they’re experts at this, they’ve been doing it forever. Working with Channing [Dungey] and Clancy and their teams and their creators on this budget model with this many episodes is such a great company-aligned way of working, and we’re thrilled to be continuing.”

“There’s a budget for a show that spans a particular season. Having more episodes, as you well know, allows you to amortize those costs over more episodes, which is always helpful. But certainly, as was the case with The Pitt, you need to be very intentional when you go in and say, ‘this show is going to be at this price point,’ so everybody needs to be aware and cognizant of that. If it’s a show about police, how many days are we on stages, and how many days are we on location, what does our casting budget look like, are we shooting in a rebate state, or are we trying to shoot this in Los Angeles? These are all the conversations you have in conjunction with your partners to be able to make the highest quality show at a responsible budget.”

“It’s about how these shows are built from the ground up. The common ingredients are incredible storytellers who are excited about trying to make a series that feels authentic and realistic, and maybe feels familiar, but in a way that also feels elevated and sophisticated. We used to always talk a lot in the past about what’s an updated variation on a familiar theme. And I think that’s what The Pitt offers, and which you can do in other genres. It’s an opportunity to take something and really elevate it and make it feel like this is a different way to do a character-based drama that feels like a streaming show.”

“We saw that and thought, Oh, this is this is an opportunity, and made that bet that audiences would flock to that kind of storytelling. And simultaneously, John and Scott and Noah were really itching to tell a story set in a hospital in 2025, that was the very important part to them, what does medicine look like today post-Covid, and their kind of creative passion we always really want. We can have ideas about shows that are going to work but we always need partners that have a real focus and passion about the story they want to tell. So, this all aligned perfectly, and The Pitt is the result.”

“Casey and I saw this white space in the streaming landscape of people not making network-style shows with 15+ episodes that return annually. And both of those are very important factors, because one, with 15 episodes, you really give people an opportunity to sink into a world. It’s one of the reasons why certain older shows, people binge them like crazy, because they’re able to watch more than eight episodes every two years.”