Interview With the Vampire attracted plenty of fans during its first season on AMC—but the Anne Rice adaptation saw its audience grow exponentially when the show recently enjoyed a two-month showcase on Max. It might go without saying, but you can expect collaborations of this sort to become even more prevalent in the future.
“AMC+ Picks on Max” ran from September 1-October 31, and saw AMC shows like Interview With the Vampire, A Discovery of Witches, Fear the Walking Dead, and Dark Winds gain exposure to even more eyeballs. During a press event last week for HBO and Max, HBO CEO Casey Bloys remarked to the Wrap that the partnership was “a nice experiment … it is nice to have those titles on our service.”
The trade noted that during its third-quarter earnings call for 2023, AMC Networks reported “viewership increases on AMC+” for, of course, Interview, as well as the adjacent Anne Rice Immortal Universe series Mayfair Witches (which was not one of the shows temporarily picked up by Max) and Fear the Walking Dead. AMC Networks CEO Kristin Dolan said this “bundling” approach will be part of its strategy moving forward, which ties into its plans to focus more on creating content. “Our goal here is really to be a lean, mean distribution machine to create great content and get it out everywhere we possibly can,” Dolan said, which angles the much smaller AMC+ (11.8 million subscribers, according to Variety) as less of a competitor to Max (95.8 million).
The Warner Bros. Discovery-owned HBO has a similar but separate deal with Netflix, which is why you can see shows like Insecure and Six Feet Under on both Max and Netflix now. Speaking to the Wrap, Bloys said, “We’re experimenting a lot … When an HBO show, like a library title, goes co-exclusive with Netflix, you’re exposing the show to a new ecosystem.”
