They Tried to Bury HBO Max but They Didn't Know She's a Seed
The Friday Post.
More from Hung Up this week: There will be a Hung Up chat tonight for the Knicks game! … I went live with Brandon Kyle Goodman for their “Messy Mondays” and we had a time … The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives returns this week,1 and I profiled Whitney Leavitt for Vulture
What do the girls on TikTok say? They always come crawling back. About two years after HBO Max was paired with the Discovery library and rebranded as “Max,” HBO chief Casey Bloys announced that the streamer is returning to the “HBO Max” moniker this week.
Reject modernity, embrace tradition: the name change is a pivot away from the “Max” pitch, which was to host a wide enough swath of genres and series and movies to compete with Netflix and Disney. “We will continue to focus on what makes us unique – not everything for everyone in a household, but something distinct and great for adults and families,” JB Perrette, president and CEO of streaming, said at WB’s Upfronts presentation, per a release. “It’s really not subjective, not even controversial – our programming just hits different.”
I am happy for the return of HBO Max and shudder to think about how many millions of dollars were spent to erase her, only to return to her two years later. Reparations for everyone who typed in “HBO” into their Chrome search only to suffer the disgrace of having to backspace and type “Max” just to rewatch season three of Veep! For the low price of “private jet money” — math isn’t my strong suit, we know this — I will save everyone a lot of time and say that HBO needs to bring back South Side and actually promote it.
As of press time, HBO Go would only send this link as comment:
What the paid list got this week:
“We’re definitely working on a lot of things. Not just one but a few projects,” Ana de Armas said when Good Morning America asked her about spending so much time with Cruise. I hope one of those projects involves a pair of scissors and trimming his ends!
More more more
The funniest Vulture headline in months lmao: “Chappell Roan Straight Up Asked Lorde If She’s Nonbinary” (Vulture)
Law Roach says Zendaya sent Anna Sawai flowers after they wore very similar white suit looks to the Met Gala. (When Roach saw the look while being interiewed on the carpet, he glared and said “Who wore it better?”) (Entertainment Tonight)
Speaking of the Met Gala: a really rich conversation about black dandyism from
. “It’s about being rebellious and fly at the same time. Right now, a lot of the conversation is only reflecting on being very buttoned up and very dandy in that traditional way, but I'm like, there's so much variation to how you show up.” (Ridiculous Little Things)Halle Bailey accused DDG, the loser streamer/wannabe rapper/her child’s father, of domestic abuse. A Los Angeles judge granted Halle a domestic violence restraining order and temporary physical and legal custody of their son, Halo. (TMZ)
Everyone in this family stays stressing Miley out. Billy Ray Cyrus says that the Cyrus family is “so close to a full healing.” (IG)
The New York Times asked Rachel Griffin-Accurso, a popular children's entertainer known as “Ms. Rachel,” if she’s paid by Hamas. (Defector)
Have had this tab open for days but haven’t finished it yet. Bleak! “Is Jeff Bezos Selling Out the Washington Post?” (The New Yorker)
The weird Angelika lobby is (temporarily?) a furniture showroom. (Curbed)
“I think the movie star manufacturer ran out around Jennifer Lawrence time or something,” Sean Penn said on “The Louis Theroux Podcast,” per Variety. “She’s probably the last movie star.” Sorry to sound like Club Chalamet, but whenever Sean Penn speaks, I think about Taylor Armstrong talking about her former sister-in-law. I’m not sure he has his finger on the pulse of what’s going on… (Variety)
“Party 4 U” getting a music video all these years after its release — only the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg saw this one coming!
That’s all this week. Tonight I’m watching the Knicks with Madeline! Have a good weekend, unless you’re a Celtics fan :)
Now, a little paywall because this took me so long:
For the Tree Painiacs
When Taylor Swift was subpoenaed in the Russian nesting doll-legal dispute between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, her publicist Tree Paine did not mince words. “Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024,” a spokesperson (Tree) said in a statement, per CNN. “The connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, ‘My Tears Ricochet.’ Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case,” the spokesperson (again, Tree) concluded.
The subpoena came from Baldoni’s side. In texts between Lively and Baldoni, the actress appeared to refer to her friend Swift as one of her “dragons,” and to herself as “Khaleesi,” a Game of Thrones reference.2 In going against Lively, Baldoni’s lawyers say, the director faced “two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.” In response to the Swift subpoena, per THR, Lively’s attorney said she doesn’t know anything relevant to the case and that Baldoni only wants to “distract from the facts of the case.”
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