Last September, HBO made a rare sweep of the top series categories at the Primetime Emmy Awards, with Game of Thrones winning best drama and Veep winning best comedy. Soon after that, Michael Lombardo started to contemplate an exit from the job as president of programming of HBO that he had held for eight years.
“It was a great time because winning the Emmys had been an enormous achievement in terms of what we have done,” he said in an interview with Deadline.
Besides the fact that it would be hard for him to top the Emmy achievement, Lombardo started to question his career path.
“I recognized that going forward, less and less of my time would be spent developing shows, that I would be spending less and less time with talent and more and more of my job is being a studio executive.” That involves “spending most of my day managing people, putting out fires and doing what being a corporate executive means.”
That was not what he wanted. “I had gotten a taste of being a creative executive, and I was feeling a desire to do more of that, but I am too far up the totem pole to be able to spend time with a writer and help crack a script.”
Lombardo admits the decision wasn’t easy. “I’m not someone who has had a lot of career changes in life. As someone who started as a lawyer and business affairs executive, I got to develop as a programming executive, someone who works with talent, which is a blessing. I would’ve never imagined that I would enjoy it, be competent at it and want to do more of.”
He approached HBO chairman Richard Plepler, and the two started conversations.
“What I needed to do was make sure there is a team in place that is pretty airtight,” Lombardo said. “We made changes in sports and the drama team.”
In December, Peter Nelson was named head of HBO Sports. In January, HBO’s head of drama Michael Ellenberg departed, with head of comedy Casey Bloys taking over comedy and drama. (He is now poised to succeed Lombardo.)
Lombardo would not comment on his successor, saying that it would be Plepler’s decision to make, but he noted that “the plan was always to have a team that can take over.” He added that “there are great executives, and I think Casey is a really talented executive.”
With a team in place, Lombardo started to work on his exit plan. The timing hasn’t been worked out yet, with the initial idea being for Lombardo to stay until the end of the year and help with the transition. With his pending departure now public, the timeline probably will be accelerated.
Lombardo began figuring out the specifics of his next gig about a month ago. No deal has been hammered out yet, but it is expected to be a producing agreement (likely with a consulting aspect to it) that would allow him to produce projects “for HBO and hopefully with HBO for third parties,” Lombardo said.
He called the setup, in which “we figured out an exciting way to continue my relationship with HBO,” a “dream.” “I love the HBO brand, and I believe in it,” he said.
Lombardo said that as a producer he would gladly join a project he had worked on as an executive but only if asked. “The last thing I want to do is force my way into a show filled with competent producers,” he said.
In addition to the two series Emmys last fall, Lombardo singles out two high points in his career at HBO. First was the unexpectedly big launch for vampire drama True Blood just after he had taken the reins of programming, which energized everyone. And the second was sitting down with Todd Haynes, whom Lombardo calls his favorite filmmaker. Haynes wrote and directed the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce.
“That’s when I got the bug to be in a room with a talented creator and help execute their vision,” Lombardo said. “It was an incredible high for me as a man and an executive.”
As for lows, Lombardo said they are inevitable in his job. He admits there has been “a string of disappointments,” pilots that he and his team thought should work and didn’t and left him with “a sense of failing” and wondering whether tweaking a script or a cut could’ve saved a project.
Did the rough times HBO recently had with some drama projects, including the difficulties getting a show with David Fincher off the ground, with his drama Utopia falling through over budget issues, the production problems on Westworld and the underperforming freshman run of Vinyl, play a role in his decision to leave? (The network also had troubles with the miniseries Lewis & Clark, which was sent back to development.)
“It wasn’t the difficulties you mentioned,” Lombardo said. “Westworld is going to come out and dazzle people after a couple of hiatuses to catch up on scripts. Vinyl didn’t launch in the way we were hoping it would; it’s disappointing, but it happens. I don’t see last year as more difficult or easier. I’m enormously disappointed that we couldn’t figure the financials for the David Fincher project, but that happens. That doesn’t have anything to do with how I’m feeling.”
Lombardo touted a “great lineup coming up, with our numbers higher than ever.”
He is particularly proud of the upcoming Bill Simmons and Jon Stewart shows, after working on the deals and the projects for the past year.
“I care desperately that Bill has the launch of his show, and I care passionately that Jon Stewart will be launching the new Daily Show in a way he has dreamed about,” Lombardo said. “To see them come to fruition is very satisfying. I leave at a very high moment for me.”
ballers sucks
It gets tons of viewers though. Nothing wrong with having 1 or 2 shows on your slate like that. As long as you don’t let it leak into your other stuff
not buying any of this. he was fired! nobody leaves that job unless they are asked to.
You’re fired, skeptic! Get out!
Would love to see Michael go to Apple or Google. They would be lucky to have him.
Can’t say he isn’t a class act, even if I wasn’t a fan of some of the decisions he’s made recently
So the life-long business affairs Exec now wants to be a full-time producer with big, lofty HBO-like auspices? Right.mhave any of you been in a notes meeting with Michael? I have. His move is ill-advised at best.
As a successful writer, I can’t wait to approach Michael to ‘crack a script’ with me. I can only hope the line I’ll have to wait in isn’t so long I don’t get the chance. I also admire the thoughtful and genuine honesty of how this actually played out. Kudos, though, to the media relations team for actually getting this article to be a thing. Only they have that kind of pull.
Lombardo has enough Emmys to choke a horse and a string of hits that 99.9% of people wish they had. That said, its still a pretty ugly picture for him at the end. The baffling decision to renew Vinyl is symptomatic of what a mess that place was becoming on the drama side. Wouldn’t those tens of millions of dollars they are about to throw out the window a second time be better served on a series that might actually draw subscribers, instead of arrogantly insisting you’re right and the viewers were wrong? Does Marty Scorsese or Mick Jagger have blackmail photos of someone? The show is a turd. Flush it.
Good luck, Mike. I’d take your batting average any day.
I mean, why all of the articles explaining why he quit? The spin becomes harder to buy the more you hammer it. You know whether you quit or not, don’t feel you have to sell the public .
Mike is always a gentleman and a class act.
Producing a series for him and his team was a true pleasure. I wish him nothing but the best !
Made some strange decisions and seemed to greenlit he based on celebrity and not qualify, which is the opposite of what HBO used to do. Tr
Thankfully we will never have to hear him stammer through a speech someone else wrote at another premiere. Go to toast masters you jackass. Also, bet his deal with HBO fails to materialize. Is Sue Naegle available to swoop in and save this sinking ship of a network?
Well actually you are wrong, HBO has always been in the Star-effing business even back when Albrecht was there. It’s just that Albrecht had much better creative chops and back then HBO really was the only game in town. Now the landscape has changed and weakness in HBO’s recent programming decisions has made it abundantly clear that new leadership is required. It would also be nice if Pleppler took this opportunity to bring in some POC in the executive offices particularly in LA where you can literally shoot a cannon down the hallway and not hit a senior level black or brown person. And it’s unfortunately been that way for decades.
Wrong. HBO created most of the greatest masterpieces in TV history with unknown actors and mostly unknown authors.They produced The Corner and The Wire with David Simon who had only wrote 4 scripts for Homicide and two books. He was a crime reporter. Bruno Heller was unknown, which is why he was paired with John Milius when he created Rome. Daniel Knauf was an health insurance broker who wanted to be a screenwriter and create a phenomenal piece of work that we came to know as Carnivàle(he had never handled a budget so he was paired with Ron Moore in the first season). David Chase created his first series with HBO in 1999 and it became the most important show in HBO’s history. Entourage was created by the unknown Doug Ellin. The only authors who were already known for something were Alan Ball, David Milch and Steven Spielberg(Band of Brothers). Of all of these series only one had SOME known actors and not even as regulars(Steve Buscemi in The Sopranos for example, who still wasn’t a movie star) and Michael Anderson in Carnivàle(not exactly a star either).
Of course not all of the projects put out by HBO while Lombardo was at the helm worked, but he’s got a very good track record, all in all. When HBO has a hit, it’s a huge hit. Starting off with TrueBlood was a great beginning.
GoT, VEEP, Bill Maher, VICE, John Oliver, and Real Sports are superior shows. HBO documentaries are also excellent.
Hope Mr. Lombardo has success in his producing venture. If what he’s saying is true, and he made the decision because he has a strong desire to get in where the creative action is, then I applaud him for this move.
You would have to be insane to put talent into development with Lombardo-the-Producer. He was a pencil-pusher that just moved up the ranks at times when HBO was the main game in town. He has no instinct for creative, and anyone that does won’t want to work with him now that he doesn’t have the HBO machine behind him.
Good luck asshole.
Main game in town?? That was pre-2009 and in that period Chris Albrecht, the greatest TV CEO of all time, was in charge.
Westworld should be out this fall; if it becomes a hit like I think the show will be, The combination of GOT and Westworld will still prove Hbo is on top
“…his decision to exit” Really? That’s funnier than most comedies on HBO
It was his decision, they couldn’t fire him unless he showed violent and or unprofessional behavior. Which is not what happened.
spin HBO Communications department.
The guy was FIRED for being the worst!
HBO has a handful of great shows and a bathtub full of not-so-great shows. Once Game of Thrones concludes it’s run, I will finally cut the cord to HBO. I can’t justify the cost to watch a few decent shows, a small handful of movies and the rest of the content that is far too politically and socially biased and fringe for my taste. I often feel like I’m being preached at by HBO’s one-sided sociopolitical content.
Politically and socially biased? You mean honest? Like Last Week Tonight?
As a wise man once said, “It’s not HBO, it’s a dumpster fire.” And Lombardo was the one who started it. Last year he told viewers that they just didn’t “get” True Detective Season 2, maybe they just weren’t bright enough to understand that flaming pile of nonsense. This year he renewed Vinyl before the verdict was even in, clueless that this was a bigger disaster than the building falling down on Richie Finstra in the way too boring 2 hour premiere. When the audience bailed out, his solution was to fire Terence Winter, instead of just cancelling it and telling Mick Jagger and Marty Scorsese that their pet show featuring the world’s most unbearable cokehead was a bomb.
HBO’s myriad of behind the scenes issues, such as the WorstWorld fiasco and all the wasted money spent on projects that never aired, were probaby the real reasons Lombardo discovered he suddenly wanted to be a producer. Thank goodness he didn’t decide to be a director, because that actually requires creative talent.
First of all, being a director doesn’t require creative talent and Michael Bay, James Cameron, Zack Snyder and Marc Webb are the living proof of that. Secondly, to be fair even Chris Albrech, the greatest CEO in television history, made a mistake like cancelling Rome before the second season(which cost them 90 million dollars) had even aired. Granted, he later admitted that doing so was a big mistake, but being a CEO of the biggest company/channel/network on the planet is not easy. Having said that, Vinyl is pretty bad and the production of the second season will take away money from new writers who could have maybe created something more watchable.
The first thing the new president needs to do is get on the phone with David Fincher and give him whatever he wants to make his two shows.