Richard Plepler left HBO as its CEO to form his own company called Eden Productions. He just signed a five-year deal with Apple to make content exclusively for Apple TV+ (via NYT).
Eden Productions
At HBO Mr. Plepler was responsible for the company’s foray into original programming. Since then HBO has been focusing on its streaming video service HBO Max. Now he will make content for Apple.
It was instantaneously clear to me that I had a wonderful and very privileged run at HBO and I wasn’t going to be able to duplicate that again. And I didn’t want to try to duplicate that again. It felt very clear to me that I just wanted to do my own thing.
Mr. Plepler also said that while he has had talks with multiple people about his next move, the only serious talks were with Apple.
I thought that Apple was the right idea very quickly, just because it was embryonic enough that I thought maybe, you know, I could make a little contribution there…
As you can imagine, in the days and the first couple weeks after I left, I received an enormous amount of well-wishing calls, and Eddy [Cue] was among those people. He was generous enough to say on that call, ‘Look, when you settle down and you think about whatever it is you want to do, know that we’re all here and we’ll talk.’