2026 has already been a huge year for HBO, with two of its biggest projects premiering alongside each other in January. On January 8, HBO introduced the sophomore season of The Pitt, the critically acclaimed medical drama led by recent Emmy winner Noah Wyle. HBO was so confident that the show was going to be a hit upon its return that it was picked up for a third season before a single episode of Season 2 began streaming. Less than two weeks after the premiere of The Pitt Season 2, HBO debuted the highly anticipated first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the Game of Thrones spin-off series starring **Peter Claffey **and Dexter Sol Ansell. Both shows are still in the HBO Max global top 10 despite being off the air for now.

HBO is responsible for some of the most prestigious and famous TV dramas over the years, such as The Sopranos and The Wire. However, back in 2018, when the demand for the series was low, HBO debuted the first season of Succession, the dark comedy/financial epic headlined by Brian Cox. Over the course of four seasons, Succession built an audience that few TV shows can match, and by the time it was airing its series finale around three years ago, almost everyone in the world was tuning in on Sunday nights to see the latest from the Roy family. Collider’s Tania Hussain recently sat down with Succession star Nicholas Braun (Cousin Greg) to chat about his new movie, The Sheep Detectives (starring Hugh Jackman), and when she asked if he saw a spin-off in store for Greg in the future, he told Collider:

“I think the series ended perfectly. I don’t think you could give Greg any more than what he got. I would hate it if he got less, but I don’t think you can give him more. I think it would be a little unbelievable. But he’s as close as he can get to the throne. So, all he’s got to do is take down Tom, and that feels really doable. I think if anybody’s going to do it, yeah, it’s Greg. So, I’m sure if we shot another season, it would go down.”

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

Succession became such a popular show because it contains one of the most well-put-together ensembles of any series in history. In addition to Nicholas Braun and Brian Cox, Succession also stars Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy, Peter Friedman as Frank Vernon, Matthew Macfadyen as Tom Wambsgans, Alan Ruck as Connor Roy, Sarah Snook as Shiv Roy, Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy, and J. Smith-Cameron as Gerri Kellman. Braun did close things out by admitting that it would be fun to return to Waystar Royco, if for no other reason than reuniting with some of his long-time colleagues:

“It would be fun to do. Yeah, I miss doing it. It’s been enough time now that I think all of us probably just would have loved to go back and do another round. And it was such a great group, and so many good actors. So no, nothing like it. There’s really nothing like it.”

Check out all seasons of Succession now streaming on HBO Max and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of any potential spin-offs.

Jesse Armstrong

Jesse Armstrong

Hiam Abbass