We've been getting a lot of teen dramas in the past few years, but none that have been written by actual teenagers. HBO Max's Generation, however, would like to change that.
The Lena Dunham produced Generation is created by father-daughter duo Daniel Barnz and 18-year-old Zelda Barnz. The show centers on a group of high school students as they struggle to navigate their sexuality and belief systems while living in a conservative community.
Back in August 2019, when Deadline broke the news that HBO Max would be ordering her pilot, the then-17-year-old Zelda posted her excitement and disbelief on Instagram. "I’ll try and keep this brief but....WOW my first deadline announcement at 17," she wrote. "I am so incredibly grateful for all the opportunities that have presented themselves to me over the past three years. I have wanted to tell stories from the minute I could talk. This is everything."
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A lot of people will probably try to compare the show to Euphoria, but during a recent panel, star Justice Smith noted that youth-oriented shows often get lumped together in ways that more adult shows don't. He explained that Generation offers a more realistic depiction of the modern day “zeitgeist” of teenage life.
Securing a young, engaged subscriber base seems to be the streaming service's priority, as it came out with Luca Guadagnino’s teen drama We Are Who We Are last year and will house the new Gossip Girl reboot. “With [HBO] Max, what’s nice about having Euphoria and We Are Who We Are — we’ll have Generation, we’ll have Gossip Girl, we’ll have the Warner Brothers library — that young adult demographic is important for Max going forward," HBO and HBO Max's head of programming Casey Bloys told Variety. "And so every show that adds to that, whether it’s on HBO or Max is a good thing for us to build up that brands so when young adult subscribers come in, they have shows to check out and places to go."
The first three episodes of the show are set to hit the streaming service March 11. Two new episodes will be released after that on March 18, then two episodes on March 25 and one episode on April 1. An additional eight episodes will round out the season later this year.
Watch the trailer for Generation, premiering March 11 on HBO Max.