Here’s an interesting little thing we’re all going to have to be conscious of from now on: An HBO Max series is not the same thing as an HBO series. The latter implies a certain mark of quality, or at least an assumption of quality that may or may not be earned, while the former… well, we don’t know yet. HBO Max won’t launch until later this year, so we don’t know if its originals will be similarly high-quality (or ostensibly high-quality), but we do know that one of those originals will be Circe, an adaptation of Madeline Miller’s best-selling novel of the same name.
This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which says Circe has been given an eight-episode, straight-to-series order for the WarnerMedia streaming service, with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (who are working on Mulan and the Avatar sequels) set to write and executive produce. The original book is a “modern take on the world of Greek mythology,” centering on the “powerful feminist perspective of the titular goddess.” There’s also talk about Circe gaining increasingly powerful magical abilities, to the point where she can “challenge gods, titans, and monsters,” so this kind of sounds like a Greek version of Maleficent. We don’t know when Circe will premiere, but THR says original content probably won’t hit HBO Max until 2020.