Casey Bloys‘ social calendar has been getting a lot of attention over the past several months — especially the timing of some of his engagements.
The Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content is a fixture at all of the streamer’s events, so him attending the red-carpet premiere of the new drama series War in New York on Tuesday night was not a surprise. His plus-one, George Cheeks, was.
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Cheeks is Chairman of TV Media for Paramount, a company in the final stages of acquiring HBO parent Warner Bros Discovery.
Bloys and Cheeks’ joint appearance was arranged weeks ago, sources said, with Bloys inviting his friend to a premiere of a buzzy new show. They kept the affair relatively private by not posing for photos together. (The image above is a collage.)
Still, the sight of top Paramount and WBD TV executives together stirred a lot of buzz at the event, coming just a day after a settlement in 12 state attorneys general’s antitrust lawsuit was announced, paving the way for the Paramount-WBD merger to close in the next two weeks after months of uncertainty.
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Bloys similarly got tongues wagging in March when he was spotted lunching with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos just a couple of weeks after Netflix had walked away from its proposed merger of WBD following the late $111 billion bid by Paramount.
The HBO boss’ social engagements are being closely scrutinized because what he will do next is one of the most intriguing questions surrounding the Paramount-WBD merger.
Paramount CEO David Ellison and Sarandos have both spoken highly of Bloys, who is coming off another strong Emmy season at HBO where he is under contract through 2027.
Bloys is expected to be a key part of Ellison’s plans for the combined Paramount-WBD. It is the way streaming leadership is structured with the planned merger of Paramount+ and HBO Max that would determine whether Bloys and Paramount Chair of Direct to Consumer Cindy Holland both stay or one of them leaves as it’s likely neither would report to the other.
Current speculation is that Bloys would stay on, with Netflix chatter remaining in the background. Cheeks, the only Paramount co-CEO to continue after the company’s 2025 acquisition by Skydance, is part of Ellison’s senior management team and is expected to carry on, with his role possibly adjusted post-WBD merger. (Heading into the transaction, Cheeks oversees Paramount’s basic cable networks, while Channing Dungey, Chairman and CEO of the Warner Bros. Television Group and Warner Bros. Discovery’s US Networks, does the same for the WBD ones, raising questions whether the combined cable portfolio will be consolidated or remain split.)
So, Cheeks’ visit to the War premiere may have been a precursor, similarly to then-Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s October 2021 attendance of the Season 3 premiere of HBO’s Succession alongside Bloys while the Discovery-WarnerMedia merger was still being finalized.
The situation is a little different as Bloys and Cheeks are considered peers with their areas not expected to overlap if both stay on at Paramount, making their premiere date two potential co-workers hanging together.
HBO/Sky’s drama War stars Dominic West and Sienna Miller as tech entrepreneur Morgan Henderson and film star Carla Duval in the grips of an acrimonious divorce.
Dade Hayes contributed to this report.
