The final season of Emmy-darling sitcom “Veep” will premiere in Spring 2019, HBO programming president Casey Bloys said Wednesday at the Television Critics Association press tour.
Production is planned to begin in October, he added, and the writers are already hard at work. The start to the farewell season was delayed to allow time for star Julia Louis-Dreyfus to recuperate after undergoing chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer.
“They just started — the writers just got together,” Bloys said this morning. “We’ll be shooting in the fall and will be airing in the spring sometime.”
Bloys had plenty to talk about during his executive session. In other big series return-date news, Bloys informed the room full of TV critics that “Game of Thrones” would be coming back for its own final season in the first half of 2019.
He was also asked to address the sexual misconduct accusations against James Franco, who stars in HBO’s “The Deuce.”
“When the Franco issue came up, we talked internally,” Bloys told reporters. “We read the LA Times article … We talked to the executive producers, to Maggie [Gyllenhaal], the actors and actresses on the set. We all felt comfortable moving forward with second season.”
Bloys also gave the official nod to HBO’s “Deadwood” movie, saying production will start in October for a Spring ’19 premiere.
Finally, Bloys was asked about that AT&T town hall, when WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey said HBO needs to get “bigger and broader.”
“There are no plans to dilute the HBO brand in favor of volume of programming,” Bloys promised the Beverly Hilton press conference attendees. “Nobody is asking to us to take pitches of a ‘Love Boat’ reboot or anything like that.”