HBO Max wants to jam as much lightning into bottles as possible, replicating the success of The Pitt, and one prominent idea for how to do that is now dead at the network.

American Blue, a police series starring Milo Ventimiglia, is not going forward with its pilot. While not sharing a “universe” with The Pitt, the goal was the same: a 15-episode, yearly, relatively cheap series that was meant to recreate some of that success.

The show may be dead at HBO Max, but Warner Bros. is now shopping it other places, ones that perhaps are more familiar with longer shows (networks) or ones that also want annual, cheap series like The Pitt (streaming services).

There is no specific indication of what went wrong here, just that HBO Max isn’t moving forward. The show would star Ventimiglia as a police officer returning to Joliet, Illinois to rescue an overwhelmed police force there. It would not be in real time format like The Pitt, despite all other similarities.

HBO Max is two-for-two in highly praised, award-gathering seasons of The Pitt, and has no plans to cease making seasons. It is very much a return to the network model of long seasons and short gaps between them. By the time a season of The Pitt finishes, it’s barely over 8 months until the next one. Season 3 arrives in January of 2027, almost likely to the week of season 1 and 2.

You can understand the desire to replicate that success, but it is no doubt harder than it looks. There have been hundreds of medical shows, police shows, every public service profession out there, really, and it’s clear how much The Pitt stands out. It’s not clear if American Blue would have, though, again, we could still see it survive elsewhere.

HBO just wrapped up a rather great season of House of the Dragon, and this weekend, will air its first DCU HBO prestige project, Lanterns, an important series for the somewhat unsteady comic book universe that James Gunn is building. HBO Max is now heavily reliant on The Pitt, given its huge viewership. Shows like The Last of Us and The White Lotus are big, but they take years between seasons. The Pitt doesn’t.

It is logical to believe that HBO Max will still pursue other Pitt-like projects, it just seems like American Blue was not the one it was looking for. We’ll see if it lands anywhere else.

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