Peter Dinklage’s fans do not have long to watch one of his critically acclaimed performances outside Game of Thrones. My Dinner with Herve, in which he plays Fantasy Island star Herve Villechaize, is on the list of movies leaving HBO Max this week. My Dinner with Herve aired on HBO in October 2018 and earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Television Movie.
My Dinner with Herve stars Jamie Dornan as journalist Danny Tate, a recovering alcoholic who is assigned to interview Villechaize. The two develop a surprising friendship as Villechaize recalls the most important parts of his career. Andy Garcia also starred as Villechaize’s Fantasy Island co-star Richardo Montalban. Sacha Gervasi directed the film and co-wrote the story with Sean Macaulay. The script is loosely inspired by Gervai’s own interactions with Villechaize, who took his own life shortly after Gervasi interviewed him in 1993. The movie has an 83% fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
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On Wednesday evening, Warner Bros. Discovery sent out a list of shows and movies leaving HBO Max “this week” as it continues making preparations for better integration of Warner Bros. brands on Discovery+ and Discovery brands on HBO Max. “As we work toward bringing our content catalogs together under one platform, we will be making changes to the content offering available on both HBO Max and Discovery+. That will include the removal of some content from both platforms,” the company said in a statement. It is also preparing to launch a CNN hub on discovery+ and a Magnolia Network hub on HBO Max.
This was the first time Warner Bros. Discovery gave a heads-up like this since all the content that disappeared earlier this month just went away with little notice. It wasn’t until Reddit users saw HBO and HBO Max originals were leaving that the disappearances generated headlines. First, six Warner Bros. movies produced for HBO Max disappeared, even though they had only been available for a few months. Moonshot, The Witches, An American Pickle, Charm City Kings, Locked Down, and Superintelligence all left, even though they were not included on HBO Max’s original list of movies leaving in August.
HBO Max users also noticed that many short-lived HBO shows were no longer available. Vinyl, Here and Now, Camping, The Brink, and Mrs. Fletcher are all gone. A Reddit user pointed out that some foreign-language shows disappeared, too. When HBO Max users asked the @HBOMaxHelpTwitter account why HBO-owned programming was leaving its own streaming service, they were often met with the same explanation Warner Bros. Discovery released Wednesday.
Warner Bros. Discovery plans to merge HBO Max and Discovery+ into one service by the summer of 2023. “At the end of the day, putting all the content together was the only way we saw to make this a viable business,” JB Perrette, CEO and president of global streaming and interactive for Warner Bros. Discovery, told analysts earlier this month. The company has not announced a name for the new service.
