This episode of The Town is presented by 20th century studios, Avatar, Fire, and Ash.

Don't miss the movie Critics Are Raving is epic and exciting and gorgeous and heartbreaking,

and stands as one of the greatest films ever made.

It's got incredible visuals, jaw-dropping action, and a cinematic achievement.

Avatar, Fire, and Ash, now playing in theaters, and now nominated for the Academy Awards for best visual effects and best costume design.

It is Thursday, February 26th. It's a pretty big statement about Hollywood these days that a show like The Pit on HBO Max feels kind of revolutionary.

It's a procedural medical drama on a platform that made its name avoiding shows like procedural medical dramas.

It costs only about $5 million per episode, about half the price of a typical precise drama.

There's 15 episodes per season at a time when many streaming shows are

doing six or eight episodes. And here's the biggest shocker. They made the pit in Los Angeles,

mostly on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. That didn't just happen. It's the result of a

strategic play by HBO Max and the lead executive producer John Wells to bring back the feeling

of those prestige broadcast TV dramas of the 80s and 90s.

And it worked.

The pit is not only a major hit, it's one of the few shows on HBO Max that charts on the weekly Nielsen Top 10.

It also won the best drama series Emmy last fall.

Its second season is now airing, so I thought it was a great time to have John Wells on the show. He's got one of the great TV producing resumes in Hollywood history, ER, the West Wing, Shameless, Southland, Animal Kingdom. This goes on and on. He was also president of the Writers Guild, so I'll ask him about that. And he's worked with so many people in town that he's always one of the most popular guys in the room. That was certainly true when I said hello at the Directors Guild Awards the other night, where, of course, his show won. We're going to talk about the novel slash retro business model for the pit, how it's influencing the development of other shows. HBO Max is trying to do a cop show now on the similar model. Some of the tax incentive issues in California,

how an upcoming episode of the pit involving ice had to be scaled back a bit.

Lots more to talk about.

So today it's John Wells and how to make a hit show in L.A.

without going broke.

From the ringer and puck.

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