Regardless of which way the Paramount merger goes over the next year, John Oliver is staying put. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Oliver has renewed his contract for another year, which should keep HBO full of rat erotica and lawsuit-baiting gags through 2027. However, speaking to the uncertainty at the network, his usual contract extension is for three years, not one.
Thankfully, new business daddies have become as much a fixture of the show as salivating over Adam Driver’s treetrunk of a body. Two years into the show’s run, AT&T announced its intention to acquire HBO’s parent company, TimeWarner. Oliver spent the next six years talking back to his business daddy, slamming its support of white nationalist congressmen and lousy cell coverage. The show even did a 2017 episode on “Corporate Consolidation,” laying out how destructive these mergers are in general. That became even more true when Discovery acquired Warner Bros. in 2022, and Oliver got another new father when all he wanted was a dad, so he frequently mocked and prodded the newly formed WBD with the tagline: “HBO Max: It’s not TV. It’s a series of tax write-offs to appease Wall Street.” In 2024, celebrating the show’s 10th anniversary, he lamented to The Hollywood Reporter, “Three different business daddies in 10 years.”
“It’s always the same lie before any takeover is about to happen: ‘I think this is going to be really good,'” he said. “That’s what you hear, and that is never, ever the case. But feel free to keep believing that for as long as you can! No, I think the beauty is that—to this point—HBO has largely been able to not feel the worst effects of it. That’s the hugely fortunate side of getting to work for them. Long may that continue because I don’t want to have anything to do with any of these corporate parents as they blow in and out of our lives.”
With a fourth business daddy likely in his future, one that infamously fired CBS’ late-night host for “purely financial” reasons, he plans on doing things the way he’s always done them. “I do not have any ability to control anything that happens with this merger,” he told The Hollywood Reporter today. “Therefore, we’ll just do what we’ve done — which is continue like it isn’t happening. Nothing’s happening and everything has stayed the same. That’s the only way that we can really move forward. Total denial.”
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