Kevin Reilly is the chief content officer for HBO Max and president of TNT, TBS, and truTV. He spoke to Variety recently about the new deal his company struck with All Elite Wrestling. Reilly also talked about the second AEW show WarnerMedia plans to air.
“I just had this idea that this was the time to invest,” Reilly told Variety. “This is a startup. It’s already over-delivered out of the gate. That’s really when you want to hit the gasoline a little bit. The guys already have ideas about additional talent and things they want to do and I wanted to incentivize them as a partner to do that. We also wanted to gave fans and talent who potentially want to come work with us the sense that this is here to stay. You can invest in it, it’s here to stay, and it’s only going to get better.”
Reilly spoke about bringing AEW Dark to the network as opposed to YouTube.
“We just figured, ‘Let’s bring it onto the network and make it a place where you truly plant up and coming talent,’” he continued. “I think we’ll start doing more packages there and filming some behind-the-scenes stuff, not for the matches that night but with other talent to plant stories and grow things that could eventually become another show in and of itself.”
A story from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter recently stated, however, that Dark will continue to air on YouTube and a second show broadcast by WarnerMedia will extend tapings to 4 hours every Wednesday night.
The full article from Variety can be found here.
