Throughout its two-season run on HBO, “Euphoria” has launched its younger solid into superstardom and gained a number of Emmys, whereas additionally being a magnet for controversy — however no matter lies forward for the Sam Levinson-created present goes to have to attend.
Earlier this week, HBO formally delayed the drama, which was set to start manufacturing later this spring. “HBO and Sam Levinson stay dedicated to creating an distinctive third season,” an HBO spokesperson advised Selection. “Within the interim, we’re permitting our in-demand solid to pursue different alternatives.”
What the community isn’t saying is that nobody at HBO is in any respect certain a 3rd season of “Euphoria” will ever come to fruition given the disparate visions for the present’s subsequent chapter. However “Euphoria” has been invaluable to the community — attracting the often-elusive millennial and Gen Z viewers, in addition to large scores — and executives from Casey Bloys on down really feel they should attempt to full the story.
Sources inform Selection that Levinson, who exerts full inventive management over the present, writing and directing each episode, proposed his imaginative and prescient for the season in winter 2023, that includes a time leap 5 years into the long run for the previous college students of East Highland Excessive Faculty. HBO thought his pitch and early drafts for the season — which included meaty arcs for Sweeney and Elordi {that a} supply described as “very compelling” — had been a powerful begin. However after the WGA strike ended, and because the full scripts started coming in, they didn’t go muster with Zendaya, “Euphoria’s” two-time Emmy-winning star who’s now 27 years previous. (HBO remark declined to remark, whereas Levinson’s workforce referred to HBO’s earlier assertion and declined additional remark.)
Zendaya — who’s in excessive demand within the movie world because of the box-office efficiency of “Dune: Half Two” ($580 million worldwide and counting) — and Levinson have loved a creatively symbiotic relationship from the beginning of “Euphoria,” one which carried over to the Netflix movie “Malcolm & Marie” through the pandemic. Although she doesn’t have veto energy over the scripts, because the star and an govt producer of “Euphoria,” Zendaya supplied Levinson vital enter for the place she’d like Season 3 to go. (A consultant for Zendaya didn’t reply to a request for remark.) Sources say Levinson already was in overhaul mode, as a result of actor Angus Cloud, who died of an overdose final July at age 25, figured closely into the preliminary idea for the season. In November, “Euphoria” producer Kevin Turen died immediately of coronary heart failure on the age of 45, which was one other traumatic blow for Levinson and the solid, and additional slowed down the inventive course of.
When Levinson turned in his revised scripts in late 2023 and early 2024, HBO execs had been now those feeling unhappy. There was a brand new arc for Zendaya’s Rue, whose character in Levinson’s first go had been relegated to the background in a considerably stunning storyline about her working as a non-public detective, which HBO had instantly vetoed. Amongst many different concepts for the rewrites, Zendaya had pitched an thought through which Rue, who’s now sober as a twentysomething younger lady, could be a being pregnant surrogate. However insiders say the brand new scripts merely didn’t really feel just like the present tonally.
Given all of the inventive disagreements, HBO explored different choices, together with the thought of Levinson himself stepping away from “Euphoria.” Different situations have been proposed however discarded, reminiscent of a film or specials, like the 2 one-offs that HBO aired through the pandemic, one in December 2020, the opposite the next month. However sources inform Selection that not solely are the present’s solid contracted for a 3rd season, however they’re all actually dedicated to seeing “Euphoria” — with Levinson — by to the tip with a 3rd season, notably Zendaya, Sweeney and Elordi.
The identical can’t essentially be mentioned for his or her respective representatives, given the required time dedication. After the second season, HBO renegotiated the solid’s offers, and gave them vital wage bumps. However for Zendaya, Sweeney and Elordi, all three earn on “Euphoria” far lower than what they might command doing movies as an alternative. Like Zendaya, Sweeney, 26, is coming off a sizzling big-screen hit with the romantic comedy “Anybody however You” ($217 million, regardless of being a title with no underlying pre-branded mental property). Elordi, 26, additionally has seen his inventory rise considerably following the important success of the psychological thriller “Saltburn” and is presently capturing Guillermo del Toro’s big-budget Netflix movie “Frankenstein.”
Though Zendaya has but to learn Levinson’s new scripts, sources say the third season isn’t useless and will very nicely come collectively. HBO has freed up the solid for the remainder of 2024, promising to return again to them on Oct. 1 with a strong plan to start filming in 2025. The shoot, if had been it to occur, would tie up the solid for 25 weeks, and the season will probably be decreased from eight episodes to 6 — although if Levinson had been to wish extra, HBO is open to it.
Levinson is now taking one other swing on the materials, whereas inventive conversations proceed between him and HBO. (He has an total cope with the community.) The community is intent on attempting to get one remaining season of “Euphoria” out of Levinson and his all-star solid. Some consider that the success or lack thereof of Zendaya’s upcoming movie “Challengers,” which opens April 26, might affect “Euphoria’s” destiny — and looming within the background, in fact, is the upcoming “Spider-Man 4,” although the script for that movie remains to be being labored on, and there’s no director or begin date.
What’s not on the desk for “Euphoria” goes into manufacturing with out accomplished scripts that everybody is proud of. Levinson did that through the unprecedented scenario that was “The Idol,” his troubled undertaking with the Weeknd, which was deemed a inventive catastrophe and a expensive self-importance undertaking for HBO.