HBO Max has ordered three new series from J.J. Abrams and Katie McGrath’s Bad Robot, including a “Justice League Dark” adaptation and a “Shining” spinoff, the upcoming streaming service announced Thursday.
This trio of dramas marks the first Bad Robot-produced television shows picked up by HBO Max since its parent company WarnerMedia signed Abrams and McGrath’s production banner to a mega overall deal last fall.
According to HBO Max, Bad Robot’s “Justice League Dark” show will be a “major series based on DC characters in the ‘Justice League Dark’ Universe” with “details to be revealed soon.”
Meanwhile, Abrams’ “The Shining” spinoff, “Overlook,” is a horror-thriller series “inspired by and featuring iconic characters” from the Stephen King novel. The show “explores the untold, terrifying stories of the most famous haunted hotel in American fiction.” “Overlook” will see King, Bad Robot and Warner Bros TV re-team, as they’ve previously collaborated on Hulu’s “Castle Rock.”
The third series, “Duster,” will be co-written by Abrams and LaToya Morgan (“The Walking Dead”). Here’s its logline: “Set in the 1970’s Southwest, the life of a gutsy getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate goes from awful to wildly, stupidly, dangerously awful.”
Abrams and Bad Robot’s head of television, Ben Stephenson, will executive produce all three shows for HBO Max series, with Bad Robot’s EVP of television, Rachel Rusch Rich, serving as co-executive producer. Warner Bros. International Television Distribution will be the global distributor for the shows.
“What an amazing start to our association with the wildly imaginative Bad Robot team under J.J. and Katie,” said Kevin Reilly, HBO Max’s chief content officer and president of TNT, TBS and truTV. “What could be better than an original J.J. idea and then Warner Bros. letting them loose on iconic I.P. from Stephen King and the DC Universe and to provide more must-have programming on HBO Max.”
HBO Max costs $14.99 a month, the same price as an HBO subscription. The streaming service launches next month, though no specific debut date has been set yet.