Veep creator says a second season of his satire would have been likely under previous management
Veep and Avenue 5 creator Armando Iannucci has admitted to finding a different culture at HBO under Warner Bros Discovery, following the recent cancellation of his movie satire series The Franchise.
The superhero show, which hailed from creator Jon Brown and was exec produced by Iannucci and Sam Mendes, completed its first season in late November and was subsequently axed in January.
Iannucci has a long history with HBO having worked on hit comedy Veep for seven seasons until 2019, as well as 2020 launch Avenue 5, which was cancelled in 2022 after two seasons.
HBO’s owner Warner Bros Discovery, born from the WarnerMedia and Discovery merger in 2022, faced extensive restructuring following its creation under chief exec David Zaslav, with scrutiny on both series and movies to deliver profits to its streamer.
And Iannucci told The Sunday Times that he believed previous regimes would have given him another season of The Franchise to prove its potential.
“They’re now part of a bigger, much more commercially minded company, and it didn’t get the ratings that the big company would have liked.
“Even a year ago or two years ago, I’m sure HBO would have said, ‘OK, you’ve got season two, but this is the one you’ve got to really hit it.’ And that would have been the spur to move everything up a gear.
“So it’s the first time I’ve encountered that. If it had gone to a season two or three it would have been a marvellous thing … but there’s no point jumping up and down.”
Iannucci also expressed concern that the growth of global streamer commissions is reducing unique local elements of shows, with series supposedly set in the UK looking “like an American small town”.
He added: “The local and the specific is what it’s all about and that can have wide appeal … then that location becomes the universal type but it’s only through doing the detail that it works.”
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