Casey Bloys On Reboots As ‘Sex and the City’ & ‘In Treatment’ Set Return & ‘True Blood’ Eyes New Chapter

HBO Today announced that the new season of In Treatment starring Uzo Aduba will premiere in May. HBO Max recently announced And Just Like That, a revival of HBO’s signature comedy series Sex and the City (without original star Kim Cattrall). HBO also is developing a True Blood reboot with Riverdale creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and NOS4A2 creator Jami O’Brien. (That project is in very early stages, and there are no current plans for original cast members to return.)

In a Q&A during HBO/HBO Max portion of TCA, HBO and HBO Max Chief Content Officer Casey Bloys spoke about bringing back popular HBO titles.

“The reboots is what gets written about a lot but when you look at our TCA lineup, you had In Treatment but you also has Generation,” he said, referring to the shows HBO and HBO Max did virtual panels for, including HBO’s In Treatment reboot and HBO Max’s new original series Generation. “It is something I’m mindful of, rebooting material is something we are experiencing across the industry. There is power in that, you are dealing with nostalgia and people’s emotional connection with a show but like with anything, I don’t want to do too many. I think there are original stories to tell, and we don’t want to lose that, so it’s always a balancing act.”

The Sex and the City revival has gotten a lot of attention over the fact that it features three of the four female friends at the center of the original series (Sex and the City without Samantha was even spoofed on Saturday Night Live.)

Bloys feels the change is authentic. “It’s like real life, the people you were friends with in your 30s not always are the same when you are in your 50s. It reflects the different stages of life.”

The decision to put And Just Like That on HBO Max vs. HBO stems from the fact that two decades have passed since the original was on HBO. It has transcended being an HBO series. It is broad and it has long entered pop culture, which are the determining factors when Bloys and his team decide which shows should be for HBO and which for HBO Max.

Sex and the City was one of two mega hits — and cultural phenomena — that ran on HBO at the same time. The other one was The Sopranos.

With the prequel movie, The Many Saints Of Newark, coming up, would HBO, which is taking the prequel route with juggernaut Game of Thrones, consider doing a Sopranos prequel series starring James Gandolfini’s son Michael as young Tony Soprano?

“I haven’t had any conversations,” Bloys said. “He is a great actor, we had him on The Deuce, and he is really good in the movie but there has been no real conversations about turning it into anything. Let the movie come out and let the people enjoy it but there hasn’t been any real conversations about turning it into anything beyond the movie.”