CONTENT WARSAW: Warner Bros Discovery Poland’s Dorota Eberhardt has overseen the launch of Max in its biggest market in Europe and basked in the glory of the streamer’s hit spy thriller The Eastern Gate. But the uncertain political and economic landscape mean challenges remain.

Dorota Eberhardt

When streamer Max officially reverts to its original name, HBO Max, later this summer, Dorota Eberhardt, who leads content strategy and programming across digital and linear platforms for Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) in Poland, says she will be “very happy.”

The change may be coming only a year after WBD launched its streaming service in Poland under the name Max, but the “confusion, operationally” that the brand switch will stir up will be worth it, according to the exec. “We were happy to launch Max, but we fully support the idea of going back to the HBO brand. It really is iconic and people long for it,” says Eberhardt, referring to the announcement in May that WBD was rebranding Max in response to consumer demand for “better content” over “more content.”

In line with its stated focus on the quality and distinctive stories synonymous with the HBO brand, it is perhaps not surprising that WBD’s biggest European market for Max has earmarked “a huge investment” in original content, according to Eberhardt, who confirms the total investment in Max’s original production over the year – across scripted and unscripted – is “around US$50m.”

The Warsaw-based executive orders drama series, documentaries and entertainment formats for the platform, with around six scripted and six factual programmes produced each year.

Eberhardt, who is speaking at C21’s Content Warsaw on Wednesday, describes scripted series as “the ‘crème de la crème’” of production output and has relished taking charge of the genre since being named VP of programming, streaming and secondary channels at WBD Poland just over a year ago. “I’ve been supervising streaming programming for a quite a long time, but in my new role I am focused on scripted series production,” the exec says. “This is the cherry on the cake.”

In January, Eberhardt and her team added quite a big cherry to WBD EMEA’s content cake when The Eastern Gate launched on Max. The thriller, directed by Oscar nominee Jan P Matuszyński, tells the story of a Polish spy whose plans to quit are derailed when her partner, also an agent, is outed by Russian intelligence and vanishes mysteriously. It attracted the largest audience for an original series from the region since the launch of the streamer last year. The show has since been recommissioned.

Spy tale The Eastern Gate “exceeded our local and global expectations,” says Eberhardt

“It exceeded our local and global expectations in terms of performance, but also in terms of generating the talk of the town,” says Eberhardt about The Eastern Gate, the title of which refers to the Suwałki Gap, a strip of land along the border between Poland and Lithuania considered of critical strategic and military importance for protecting NATO’s eastern flank and maintaining regional stability. “We want to make shows that always resonate with the audience and make people discuss important things, and The Eastern Gate is a great case of how it can be done,” comments Eberhardt.

Another series from WBD Poland’s scripted slate this year hitting the zeitgeist is A Decent Man, which launched on Max in March. The psychological thriller, about a surgeon who discovers his son is being bullied, deals with issues of masculinity and parent/child relationships and has been compared to Netflix’s hit series Adolescence from the UK.

“We are very pleased with the performance and also the great reviews,” says Eberhardt. Significantly, she reveals that “other Max markets are looking at making local versions [of the show]. I don’t want to reveal which countries, but it’s more than one, and I think this is proof this a very contemporary story that can travel.”

Currently in production is Where is Heaven? (Gdzie jest Niebo?), directed by Bartosz Blashke. The 1990s-set series is based on Sebastian Keller’s book Heaven: Five Years in a Sect, about his real-life experiences of being drawn into a cult led by Bogdan Kacmajor, a faith healer who believed he was a prophet. The group was linked to reports of kidnappings and children being kept prisoners.

“This is a big topic again that we want to tackle [as part of] our next scripted projects,” says Eberhardt, who describes it as relevant to modern times because it deals with issues of loneliness and isolation and the dangers that can lead to.

Where is Heaven? is based on the experiences of author Sebastian Keller

Also on the slate is the period crime series Women’s Hell (Piekło Kobiet), which tackles issues of female empowerment and women’s rights in 1920s Warsaw. The series has just wrapped production and is the latest project by multi-award-winning producer Ewa Puszczyńska (The Zone of Interest).

Commenting on the project, Eberhardt says: “Sadly, 100 years later, topics about feminism and women’s rights are still as resonant as then. We wouldn’t go just for a period drama, but we think it’s a great opportunity to tell a modern story using fantastic scenes and beautiful costumes and designs.”

On the documentary side, the exec highlights two titles from 2024 that were “gamechangers” for Max in Poland: King of Zanzibar and Skin Hunters, produced by head of documentary series Magda Szczawinska.

“Both were true crime stories around very big subjects that were very well known to audiences. Both scripted documentary series performed very well, comparable to the big scripted series,” notes Eberhardt.

A big industry story is the potential sale of WBD-owned TVN Group, which aside from being Poland’s largest private broadcaster, produces hit originals such as The Eastern Gate. In April, WBD Poland said it had decided not to sell the group, but not before prime minister Donald Tusk placed it on a list of strategic companies that could not be sold off without the consent of the government.

The aim was to prevent potential buyers from threatening national interests in the run-up to the elections for a new Polish president, which was decided on June 1 when the electorate went to the polls in record numbers. Right-wing Donald Trump-inspired candidate Karol Nawrocki won by a narrow margin against pro-European Union liberal candidate and mayor of Warsaw Rafal Trzaskowski. The result is expected to re-energise Nawrocki’s supporters, the conservative Law & Justice opposition, which when in power passed a controversial new media ownership law that threatened TVN’s licence. TVN’s news channel, TVN24, was highly critical of the Law & Justice party when it was in power.

Psychological thriller A Decent Man launched on Max in March

While not commenting directly on the political situation in Poland or WBD affairs, Eberhardt acknowledges that one of the challenges the business faces is the “uncertain times” we live in. “We look for stability and we try to benefit as much as possible from these changes going on all around,” she says. The exec also praises “the fantastic drama department team, with great producers, but also great script writers, head writers and developers” that work on scripted series at the TVN Group.

Speaking at C21’s Content London event last December, Eberhardt indicated that coproductions and windowing might play a part in Max’s content strategy. “I believe that copros and windowing are the most important trends in our industry,” she said. “An initial investment can only get you so far, then you have to find new models for cooperation in order to deliver content to our audience.”

Fast-forward to now and Eberhardt says: “There is nothing we can announce yet, but we are in talks about different kinds of coproductions, and we definitely see that we can work with other platforms that have different audience groups; we can work with the other linear channels. We see it happening [internally] but also with our competitors joining forces within Poland.”