Bridgerton, The Bear, Fallout and HBO Max: The big news out of Netflix, Disney, NBC and Prime upfronts

Entertainment is global and streaming is ubiquitous, so, for the past decade, it can feel like we should be paying more attention to the upfronts season in the US than at home, especially if you mostly watch scripted TV.

This week, the American streamers and networks rolled out their wares for the coming year, with all-stops showcases teeming with celebrities and big announcements.

At the Netflix event, the streamer revealed it has renewed Bridgerton for a further two seasons, all the way up a sixth instalment. The swoony romantic drama is one of the platform’s biggest hits with its first three seasons among its most-watched originals.

A fourth season starring Australian actor Yerin Ha has finished filming and is now in post-production for its 2026 release. Netflix dropped a sneak peek clip of the moment Benedict Bridgerton lays eyes on his soon-to-be lover at a masquerade ball.

The streamer also revealed it had commissioned new seasons of political thriller The Diplomat, Tina Fey comedy The Four Seasons, Judy Blume teen drama Forever, Love on the Spectrum, Million Dollar Secret, My Life with the Walter Boys and Survival of the Thickest.

It also announced a slate of new titles including the movie Here Comes the Flood, a bank heist movie directed by Fernando Meirelles and starring Robert Pattinson, Denzel Washington and Daisy Edgar-Jones.

There’s also a boxing drama called Fight for ’84 with Jamie Foxx, and an as-yet-untitled comedy series from Schitt’s Creek’s Dan Levy and Shiva Baby and Bottoms’ Rachel Sennott, who co-created the show and will also star as two siblings who are blackmailed into the world of organised crime.

Earlier this week, Netflix confirmed a fourth season of French crime caper Lupin, starring Omar Sy.

Over at Warner Bros Discovery’s showcase, the most surprising announcement was actually a branding change, or a change back, as it were.

The media company conceded it was reverting the name of its global streaming service Max to HBO Max, which was its previous moniker.

When WBD dropped the “HBO” part in 2023, it was widely considered a strange decision given the premium brand value attached to HBO, the US cable network that has been synonymous with high-end productions including The Sopranos, Game of Thrones and Succession.

At the time, minimising the HBO brand was supposed to help Max position itself as a more mainstream proposition competing with Netflix’s “something for everyone” approach, and the merger with Discovery flooded the platform with a raft of low-end reality, lifestyle and docuseries titles such as 90 Day Fiance and My 600-lb Life.

HBO boss Casey Bloys joked that he’s all set for the change, which will be rolled out mid-year internationally including in Australia, and still has a drawer full of stationery the HBO Max branding from “the last round”. On social media, the company was poking fun of itself, tying the change to clips from Game of Thrones and Friends.

A release from WBD gave insight behind the move, “No consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content”. In what could be considered a sledge at Netflix, it added that other services were “filling the more basic needs with volume” and that HBO as a brand was distinct for quality.

Earlier in the week, NBCUniversal had dropped the first look at The Office spin-off The Paper and revealed more details about a new comedy from Amy Poehler and Parks and Recreator co-creator Mike Schur about four women on an archaeological dig.

The previously mooted reunion between Tina Fey and 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, is now official, and the two were onstage at the upfronts to present, along with Daniel Radcliffe, who will also star.

It also promoted upcoming shows including The Miniature Wife, a marriage comedy starring Elizabeth Banks and Matthew Macfadyen, and Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy, a Michael Chernus and Gabriel Luna drama about the notorious serial killer.

Disney rolled out the cast of The Bear including Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach to reveal the fourth season will drop all 10 episodes on June 25, as well as Evan Peters, Anthony Ramos, Jeremy Pope and Ashton Kutcher to promote The Beauty, a Ryan Murphy-produced series about a STI that makes you attractive but ultimately kills you.

On the Marvel side, Disney brought out Krysten Ritter to announce the actor will reprise the character of Jessica Jones in the second season of Daredevil: Born Again. She had previously played the superhero in her own show during the Marvel TV-Netflix era from 2015 to 2019.

Glen Powell was on hand to announce the release Chad Powers, the football comedy he co-created and stars in, will debut on September 30.

At Amazon’s Prime Video event, the streamer renewed the sci-fi dystopian epic Fallout, which stars The White Lotus’s Walton Goggins, for a third season, ahead of its season two premiere at the end of this year.

It also confirmed the commission of a Creed spin-off series called Delphi, which Michael B. Jordan will produce. The show will be centred on the Delphi boxing gym from the Creed and Rocky movies.

It also offered a first-look at Nicolas Cage’s return as Spider-Noir, this time in live-action format after debuting as the character in the Into the Spider-Verse film, and announced the Legally Blonde prequel, Elle, will premiere in mid-2026.