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\n \u201cFear and anxiety are permeating these companies, and there\u2019s paralysis everywhere.\u201d
\n Photo: Sabrina Lantos\/HBO Max\n <\/p>\n
How hot is Heated Rivalry<\/a>? In the three months since the steamy Canadian hockey romance debuted on HBO Max, a TV-studio development exec who focuses on literary acquisitions has been fielding pitches from publishers on possible clones. \u201cBook agents have been dusting off their sports romances and kind of tiptoeing into the marketplace with them,\u201d he says. \u201cI just got sent a male-male tennis romance that\u2019s Heated Rivalry meets Challengers<\/a>.\u201d He\u2019s obviously wary of anything that could come off as an opportunistic knockoff, but he\u2019ll give it a look. \u201cIf the wrong lesson is that the queer tennis show gets made, then I don\u2019t want to be right,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n HBO and HBO Max content chief Casey Bloys hasn\u2019t heard about the aforementioned book, but he has one word of advice for fellow execs thinking about trying to clone the show: Don\u2019t. \u201cThe wrong lesson to take from this show\u2019s success would be to have Heated Rivalry in baseball or Heated Rivalry in football,\u201d he says. Bloys <\/strong>snapped up U.S. rights to the Crave drama late last year because it \u201cwas something fresh that people hadn\u2019t seen before.\u201d But now that 11.5 million U.S. viewers (and counting) have experienced it, he argues that rushing to put on a slew of other sports romances would be a mistake. \u201cIt can\u2019t be replicated,\u201d he says, pointing to the dozens of (mostly) failed sitcoms<\/a> about sexy young singles that emerged<\/a> after Friends exploded onto the scene in 1994. \u201cThat would be the exact wrong message to take.\u201d<\/p>\n Programming executives across Hollywood spent this winter buzzing about creator Jacob Tierney\u2019s unlikely hit, trying to understand what else made it connect with audiences so quickly. While Netflix execs famously made their big bet on House of Cards 15 years ago because trends from its DVD rental business<\/a> suggested audiences would love it, Heated Rivalry stands out because nothing in The Data suggested it would turn into a phenomenon. \u201cWe all believed in it in a very non-logical way,\u201d says Justin Stockman, vice-president of content at the Canadian streamer Crave. Stockman and other insiders we spoke to are under no illusion that data won\u2019t be a factor in future programming, but as one longtime agent puts it, Hollywood has been following the same formulas for too long, the result of\u00a0 a \u201chighly tech-y, corporate, clinical\u201d culture among streamers. \u201cFear and anxiety are permeating these companies, and there\u2019s paralysis everywhere,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we can bring back really boundary-pushing but still commercial stuff the way we did in the early to mid-2000s? Hallelujah,\u201d he adds, referring to shows such as ABC\u2019s 2004 breakouts Lost and Desperate Housewives. \u201cThis is the time to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the insider mulling the gay-tennis book, his development team is already approaching existing and forthcoming books differently as a result of Crave\u2019s success. \u201cInstead of trying to find our own sports romance,\u201d he says, \u201cit\u2019s a great opportunity for us to identify some of those more niche or fervent, loyal fan bases in the book community.\u201d Here\u2019s how he and other sources predict the hunt for the next Heated Rivalry will play out:<\/p>\n While it\u2019s not uncommon for TV shows to incorporate romance into their storylines, it\u2019s usually coupled with other, splasher narrative elements in order to draw the biggest-possible audience. \u201cIt\u2019s usually, \u2018It\u2019s a thriller, and there\u2019s a big romance component to it,\u2019 or, \u2018It\u2019s a ghost story, but there\u2019s a romance at the heart of it,\u2019\u201d says one veteran studio-development exec. But in the case of Heated Rivalry, Tierney fought hard to keep his vision for the show pure (like the source material). \u201cIt fully embraced, unapologetically, the romance genre,\u201d the exec says.<\/p>\n Stockman agrees and says he and his team were conscious about letting Tierney make the show he wanted rather than forcing him to check other boxes in order to (potentially) reach more viewers. \u201cWe didn\u2019t try to make it something it\u2019s not,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a story about lust and then longing and then love. You get sucked in by the lust, and then the longing keeps you going, and then in the end, you feel really good because there\u2019s love. It never is trying to be a bunch of other things. Nobody tried to water it down; we let it be what it wanted to be.\u201d Or, as one development exec at a rival streamer puts it, \u201cThe beauty of the show is its simplicity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have said to the marketplace, to the producers that pitch us, \u2018We want more romance,\u2019\u201d says Stockman. \u201cWe don\u2019t get pitched enough. We\u2019ve heard from other platforms, and they\u2019ve said the same thing. That was before Heated Rivalry. Hopefully this brings in more of those pitches, whether it\u2019s from Harlequin or YA to the more edgy streaming style that Heated Rivalry would fall under.\u201d<\/p>\n While Crave let the vision for Heated remain pure \u2014 the show is a romance, full stop \u2014 insiders believe the show broke out because of the two words that generally precede \u201cromance\u201d when fans talk about the show. \u201cOne takeaway for me as an executive is, you need to have a hooky concept that can be easily explained to people,\u201d says the veteran studio-development exec. \u201cWhen somebody said to me, \u2018Oh, have you seen the new gay-hockey romance?\u2019 Those were three words I did not expect to hear together. And all of a sudden I was like, \u2018Tell me more.\u2019 There\u2019s so much content out there right now, you need that kind of hook to get people talking about it, like, \u2018Well, now I have to watch.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But as important as getting people to sample the show was, Bloys argues that what kept viewers coming back to Heated every week was the way in which the show (and the book series) embraced the exceedingly horny side of Shane and Ilya\u2019s relationship. \u201cThat combination of explicit sex and an underlying sweetness is not something you typically see. You either get one or the other,\u201d he says. \u201cWhenever a show hits, you kind of relearn very basic things, and in this case, I think it was offering something new that people hadn\u2019t seen before.\u201d That extends to how Heated wrapped up its first season, Stockman adds. \u201cThe challenges they face being solved at the end was part of the magic of the show,\u201d he says. \u201cThe other shoe didn\u2019t drop, where they get punished for being gay, which is generally what happens in queer romances. They actually just get to be together.\u201d<\/p>\n Studios and streamers have entire departments devoted to identifying best sellers or book series \u2014 many times even before they get published \u2014 with an eye on turning them into hit movies or TV series. (See Netflix\u2019s recent smash People We Meet on Vacation.) In the case of Heated Rivalry, the formula got flipped: Rachel Reid\u2019s Game Changers book series has had a passionate audience for years, but it only turned into a publishing juggernaut with multiple titles on the New York Times best-seller list<\/a> after the show broke out. \u201cWe tend to see feeding frenzies around these really big books that have a lot of money put behind them, whether from the publishing industry or they\u2019re represented by a big agent,\u201d says the studio exec who concentrates on book rights. \u201cSo it\u2019s been really nice to see a show like Heated Rivalry, based on a book that didn\u2019t have as big of a platform, also succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n This exec thinks the show\u2019s breakout status \u201copens doors\u201d for Hollywood IP-acquisition teams to change up their approach to development. \u201cIt allows us to go after material that we might not generally go after just because it isn\u2019t the bright, shiny new toy of the week,\u201d he says, adding that Heated\u2019s success has \u201csupercharged our own internal development\u201d and lead to deals that might not have gotten made even just a few months ago. \u201cThere are several projects that we were fans of and unable to get traction on, or books we identified since the show\u2019s success, where we\u2019ve been able to use the example of Heated to move them along in the acquisition process,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Much has been written about the fact that HBO spent very little \u2014 under $600,000 per episode \u2014 to acquire the U.S. streaming rights to Heated. But the show\u2019s overall production budget was also insanely small by modern-day streaming standards, with Tierney\u2019s production partner, Brendan Brady, pegging it at \u201cfar south\u201d of $3.6 million (U.S.) per episode in a recent interview<\/a>. \u201cJacob Tierney did this on a budget \u2014 and it looks great<\/a>,\u201d says Bloys, who as overseer of the HBO brand has not hesitated to spend upward of $15 to $20 million for a single hour of a TV show such as House of the Dragon<\/a>.<\/p>\n