It’s important to start your new year off on the right foot, so if movies and TV factor into your 2019 plans, and you’re an HBO subscriber, you’ll want to stay on top of everything the premium channel’s streamer is adding in January. What follows is our handy breakdown of HBO Now’s incoming highlights, lowlights and everything in between.
We’ll begin on the small screen, where HBO’s most exciting January addition lives: True Detective, returning for a much-anticipated third season on Jan. 13, 2019. The Nic Pizzolatto-created crime-drama anthology wowed critics and audiences alike with its debut season in 2014, winning five Emmys in the process, but fell off hard in its 2015 second installment, leaving the show in limbo … until last spring, when reports revealed that Pizzolatto had started work on a third season, which would set Oscar winner Mahershala Ali to star that summer and receive an official green light in September. Fast-forward to now, almost two years later, and True Detective season three will finally be a reality—at least on our television screens. The new season’s story sounds awfully similar to that of season one—two detectives, one horrific crime, three timelines—which, all things considered, is probably a positive sign. We begin in 2015, when retired detective Wayne Hays (Ali), his memory failing, recalls the disappearance of 12-year-old Will and ten-year-old Julie Purcell, looking back on the days and weeks immediately following the 1980 crime, as well as on when he and his former partner, Roland West (Stephen Dorff), were subpoenaed a decade later after a major break in the case. True Detective’s eight-episode third season begins with two new episodes on Jan. 13, followed by single episodes on subsequent Sundays. Here’s hoping the third time’s a charm for Pizzolatto’s show, which isn’t the only notable HBO series beginning its third season in January: Comedies Crashing, starring stand-up comedian Pete Holmes as a young and striving version of himself, and High Maintenance, starring co-creator Ben Sinclair as a New York City cannabis purveyor known only as The Guy, both debut on Jan. 20. Not to be forgotten, also, is the debut HBO comedy special from Insecure star Amanda Seales, Amanda Seales: I Be Knowin’, whereas the new season of Real Time with Bill Maher most definitely is to be forgotten.
That brings us to the feature film side of things, where HBO Now streamers are in for a good—if not great—start to 2019. Leading the way are a number of high-profile theatrical premieres, none quite as exciting as Ocean’s 8 (Jan. 12), the all-women Ocean’s 11 spinoff that parlayed its cocktail of glamor, thrills and laughs—not to mention its obscenely stacked cast of Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, Helena Bonham Carter and Rihanna, among others—into success both critical and commercial. Don’t overlook Tully (Jan. 19), either—the Diablo Cody-penned, Jason Reitman-directed, Charlize Theron-starring motherhood drama recently received a Golden Globe nomination for Theron’s lead performance as Marlo, a struggling mother of three who comes to form a unique bond with her young night nanny, Tully (Mackenzie Davis). We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though: Theatrical premieres coming earlier in the month include long-awaited Broken Lizard sequel Super Troopers 2 (Jan. 5) and Uma Thurman-starring fantasy-horror-drama Down a Dark Hall (Jan. 6), with controversial Benedict Cumberbatch drama Brexit (Jan. 19), disastrous disaster film Geostorm (Jan. 20) and stranger-than-fiction studio comedy Tag (Jan. 26) following after. And HBO’s film slate has plenty to offer beyond theatrical premieres, with titles like Tim Burton’s Big Fish, Dave Chappelle-starring stoner comedy Half Baked, the Wachowski’s divisive sci-fi epic Jupiter Ascending, 2017 superhero standout Logan, early-2000s rom-com My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 1985 Chevy Chase/Dan Aykroyd comedy Spies Like Us, Francis Ford Coppola coming-of-age drama The Outsiders and Steven Soderbergh’s Oscar-winning drug war drama Traffic all arriving on Jan. 1.
Of course, there are also a number of movies making their way out of the HBO library in 2019, as well, all of which exit on Jan. 31. Those titles include Gore Verbinski’s underrated A Cure for Wellness, Tom Cruise-starring crime caper American Made, Oscar-winning Michael Oher story The Blind Side, rom-com classic Bridget Jones’s Diary, animated adventure How to Train Your Dragon, 2017’s massively successful IT adaptation, disappointing sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle, wonderful sequel/spinoff The Lego Batman Movie, beloved (and highly quotable) adventure story The Princess Bride and more.
See HBO Now’s full January slate below.
Season Premieres:
True Detective, Season 3 Premiere (1/13)
Crashing, Season 3 Premiere (1/20)
High Maintenance, Season 3 Premiere (1/20)
Real Time with Bill Maher, Season 17 Premiere (1/19)
Original Programming:
Brexit (1/19)
Amanda Seales: I Be Knowin’ (1/26)
Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists (1/28)
Theatrical Premieres:
Super Troopers 2, 2018 (1/5)
Down a Dark Hall, 2018 (1/6)
Ocean’s 8, 2018 (1/12)
Tully, 2018 (1/19)
Geostorm, 2017 (1/20)
Tag, 2018 (1/26)
Estrenos:
Lesson #7 by Alberto Ferreras, 2018 (1/1)
Sra. Genovese (AKA Mrs. Genovese), 2018 (1/1)
El Rio (AKA The River), 2018 (1/4)
Biutiful (AKA Beautiful), 2010 (1/11)
Veneno: Primera Caída, el Relámpago de Jack (AKA Jack Veneno), 2018 (1/18)
Sin Rodeos (AKA Empowered), 2018(1/25)
Starting January 1:
The American President, 1995
The Beach, 2000
Big Fish, 2003
Clash of the Titans, 2010
Cop Out, 2010
Couples Retreat, 2009
The Diary of Anne Frank, 1959
The First Grader, 2011
The Girl Next Door (Unrated Version), 2004
Half Baked, 1998
Hop, 2007
In the Valley of Elah, 2007
Jupiter Ascending, 2015
Logan, 2017
Love Potion No. 9, 1992
The Losers, 2010
My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2002
Never Been Kissed, 1999
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, 2010
Pirate Radio, 2009
Psycho, 1998
Psycho II, 1983
Psycho III, 1986
Ramona and Beezus, 2019
Season of the Witch, 2011
Sex and the City 2, 2010
Shark Tale, 2004
Spies Like Us, 1985
Striptease (Unrated Version), 1996
The Outsiders, 1983
The Perfect Score, 2004
Traffic, 2000
X2, 2003
Z for Zachariah, 2015
Ending January 31:
17 Again, 2009
A Cure for Wellness, 2017
American Made, 2017
Batman, 1966
The Blind Side, 2009
Bridget Jones’s Diary, 2001
Dolphin Tale 2, 2014
Drag Me to Hell, 2009
Fist Fight, 2017
The Good Lie, 2014
Heaven Can Wait, 1978
How to Train Your Dragon, 2010
The Hunted, 2003
IT, 2017
It’s Complicated, 2009
Jack Frost, 1998
Kingsman: The Golden Circle, 2017
Lady Macbeth, 2017
Land of the Lost, 2009
The Lego Batman Movie, 2017
The Lizzie McGuire Movie, 2003
Marci X, 2003
The Mountain Between Us, 2017
Paparazzi, 2004
Passenger 57, 1992
Practical Magic, 1998
The Princess Bride, 1987
The Terminal, 2004
TMNT, 2007
Under the Tuscan Sun, 2003
Vanilla Sky, 2001
You’ve Got Mail, 1998