HBO’s once-exclusive series Insecure may be coming to Netflix

It sounds like Warner Bros. Discovery is getting insecure about cash flow again. Per Deadline, WBD is reportedly looking to license Issa Rae’s award-winning series Insecure to Netflix, which would mark the first time an HBO show has been licensed to a rival streamer.

This isn’t the first time HBO has licensed titles, of course. In the mid-2010s, when the streaming revolution was warning people against binging Arrested Development and viewers needed cable to drown in Friends episodes, HBO licensed The Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, and The Wire to Prime Video. However, as Deadline notes, this was before Amazon got in the original television game with such titles as Woody Allen’s Miley Cyrus-vehicle Crisis In Six Scenes. Edited versions of Sex And The City and Curb Your Enthusiasm have landed on other networks, too. Furthermore, during the last round of cuts, HBO licensed its then-recently canceled series Westworld to free streamers Tubi and Roku. So none of this is unprecedented, but it doesn’t sound good.

Under new ownership, many believe WBD is scraping the sheen off the Warner Bros. shield. After all, once the gold standard for television, HBO is now just another awkward hub on the Max landing page. Even Turner Classic Movies, a network CEO David Zaslav supposedly holds near and dear to his heart, is on the chopping block. Last night, The Wrap reported senior executives were ousted at TCM, sounding alarm bells for cinephiles about the network’s future. It’s so concerning that IndieWire reports Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson organized an emergency call with Zaslav over the future of TCM.

As for Insecure, the licensing agreement is not set in stone, but high-quality exclusives are HBO’s bread and butter. As many have argued over the Max name change, HBO is perhaps the only network audiences still expect quality from. If Succession can end up on Disney+, there’s not much of a brand there anymore.