UPDATE: HBO is denying Sneider’s report, and claims that “Euphoria” is still a go to shoot in early 2025 — I don’t believe them. How will they find commitment from their main actors to shoot for six months? Zendaya’s schedule is jam packed. Jacob Elordi is committed to Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” in the first quarter of 2025. Sydney Sweeney is set to film Paul Feig’s “The Housemaid” in February, 2025. Good luck, HBO.
Oh, and the scripts are not ready. None of the actors have received them yet.
EARLIER: After many delays, HBO had announced that “Euphoria” season 3 would start shooting in January 2025. Last I heard, the script hadn’t been finalized. I was always skeptical that a third season would actually occur, and it looks like that might be the case.
My initial reporting had “Euphoria” being in turmoil and it kickstarted months’ worth of headlines, which clearly haven’t died down. Many questions about the HBO series remain. Jeff Sneider is now hearing that the planned 2025 shoot is not happening and that the show might be “dead” over at HBO.
Hearing EUPHORIA is, indeed, dead at HBO and that everyone is walking away from the show and leaving it where they left it. Could always revisit down the line years later, but no 2025 shoot planned anymore. It sounds like this is it, folks...
This isn’t surprising news as Zendaya, star of “Euphoria,” has a booked 2025 ahead of her. The actress is supposed to shoot “Dune: Messiah,” “Spider-Man 4” and Christopher Nolan’s next film in 2025. Where does that leave “Euphoria”? HBO had originally booked a six-month production for next year.
Back in April, a source had hinted to me that the show was done: “it’s about commitment and I just don’t see everyone being onboard, at the same time, after this last delay.”
This latest delay comes amidst a recent report about the behind-the-scenes chaos to turn season 3 into a reality. It turned out that creator Sam Levinson had originally pitched to HBO, in winter 2023, a third season that jumped ahead five years, with “very compelling” arcs for Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie and Jacob Elordi’s Nate. However, Zendaya disliked the script so much that Levinson had to rewrite the entire thing from scratch.
But after Levinson finished his updates to the S3 scripts, HBO executives were not happy with the final result. They didn’t like Zendaya’s new arc, which had her character sidelined as a private detective. An assortment of other storylines didn’t make sense to them either.
This sent Levinson back to the drawing board with a third revision and, according to Variety, insiders say the updated scripts still don’t tonally feel like “Euphoria,” which means Levinson is probably going to have to rewrite the whole thing again, for the fourth time.
HBO reportedly explored replacing Levinson as the creative head. There was also the idea of turning season 3 into a movie. All of this doesn’t even take into account the fact that, two years since the last season, some of the main actors (Zendaya, Colman Domingo, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer) are no longer doing TV and have graduated into the movie business.
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.