EXCLUSIVE: The Eastern Gate will open again on Max.
The Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) streamer has ordered a second season of the drama, which stars Lena Góra and Karol Pocheć, with a script already in development.
The news came during a wide-ranging interview with Dorota Eberhardt, VP Programming at WBD in Poland, during which she discussed content spend for 2025 that we understand is in the eight figure range, addressed local competition and talked about the impact of shows such as Netflix’s Adolescence.
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The Eastern Gate‘s recommission should come as no surprise, given its outsized impact for WBD streamer Max, where it has set several records.
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Tapping into concerns around the precarious political environment in Europe, the series is billed as “a modern espionage game amid brewing international conflict and rising tensions.” It is set in the spring of 2021 and follows the story of Polish spy Ewa Oginiec (Góra), who after a personal tragedy plans to quit the intelligence service and start an ordinary life, but is derailed when Russian operatives expose her partner (Pocheć), who disappears without a trace.
Produced by WBD-owned TVN, it is directed by Oscar nominee Jan P. Matuszyński and also stars Leszek Lichota, Bartłomiej Topa, Andrzej Konopka, Jan Englert, Tomasz Ziętka, Antoni Sztaba and Ewelina Starejki.
According to WBD, Season 1 has ranked as the second-most watched scripted title in Europe this year, trailing only The White Lotus Season 3, and attracted the largest audience for an EMEA original since Max’s launch in June last year, as part of the streamer’s ongoing global roll out.
In the U.S., it has performed particularly strongly, providing its biggest audience outside of Poland and gaining good reviews in The New York Times, and is the most-watched European production since Spain’s 30 Coins. Furthermore, it is the second most-viewed non-English language series globally since its premiere after Brazilian telenovela Scars of Beauty. The data is from January 31-March 7 and the performance of all European local originals over those 35 days.
“The Eastern Gate is a perfect example of Max’s ability to create high-quality content in any language, for any market, and it be popular across the world,” Eberhardt told Deadline. “After an incredibly successful first season, we’re sure fans will be just as excited as we are for The Eastern Gate to return for another season.”
With the Ukraine War now going beyond three years, and Russia continuing attacks despite talks with the U.S. seemingly pointing to a ceasefire, The Eastern Gate appears to have tapped into what Eberhardt called “the search for the zeitgeist.”
“No matter if it is crime, thriller or costume drama, we always want to make sure this is the story that resonates with the audience and addresses their fears or emotions,” she added. “We want to be in the conversation. The Eastern Gate exceeded all our expectations to that end.”
Notably, when WBD Poland’s in-house development team at its TVN network began working on the idea five years ago, it had been conceived as a “political fiction” in which Russia attacks Poland, which borders Ukraine to the west. “It really was very much fiction then, but two years later, the whole world realized it’s not fiction anymore,” said Eberhardt. “It’s just brutal reality.”
Staying close to reality
The script was then redeveloped as a spy story, but changes were still required as more and more of the ideas came true – for example, one scene had been planned for an attack on a music concert, but following the Hamas-led massacre at the Nova festival on October 7, 2023, this was understandably dropped. “It is amazing that the story ended up so close to reality,” said Eberhardt.
However, what did end up on screen has cut through, and Eberhardt said the biggest challenge now was to “come up with a story that is very important to people, but does not exaggerate how much this could happen in reality.” Development is well underway, with Matuszyński returning to direct.
The Eastern Gate is just one example in a trend for programs cutting through on Max Poland that address a live global issue. Another is Piekło Kobiet (Women’s Hell), a series from Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest producer Ewa Puszczyńska. The series is currently in production, having begun shooting this month, with Anna Maliszewska directing.
Piekło Kobiet is set in 1930s Warsaw around themes of female friendship and solidarity in a world dominated by men, and follows the story of an ambitious medical student, who discovers his sister has died after an illegal abortion following a rape. He begins suspecting a mysterious man connected to an advert in a matrimonial magazine, but finds the title’s male editor-in-chief uninterested, unlike his wife, who decides to help.
“The whole story is around the first wave of feminists in Poland,” said Eberhardt. “It’s about women’s empowerment and the right to choose. It’s a costume drama, but surprise, surprise: One-hundred years later we are pretty much in the same moment.”
The ‘manosphere’
Elsewhere, another series, A Decent Man, dropped on Max on Friday (March 21). The show stars Krzysztof Czeczot as a devoted father, husband and skilled heart surgeon who makes a split-second decision that threatens to alter the course of his life, after discovering his son is being bullied. It is the first TVN production that is being branded as a HBO original in the U.S. and dropped day-and-date. “It’s a psychological thriller and even though there is no brutal crime or police chases, you can’t stop watching because it will make you so tense,” said Eberhardt.
In different ways, both shows lock into the heated debate around the ‘manosphere’ – the world created and inhabited by the likes of influencer Andrew Tate. The breakout show of this year to date, Netflix’s recently launched Adolescence, broaches the same subject head on with a plot involving a teenage boy arrested for killing a female classmate.
“Adolescence is an absolutely amazing story, and this is the kind of creative competition I enjoy,” said Eberhardt. “In a way, A Decent Man and Adolescence both address a similar trending important story, starting with an act of violence from teenage boys that triggers everything.”
More broadly, Eberhardt says of her content strategy: “When we look for any commission for any scripted show, there are some general rules that we share with any other streamer: The strongest genres, the best talent on the market, original ideas and great entertainment, but the extra layer we always look for is the zeitgeist.”
WBD in Poland
Poland has been a key European market for WBD for many years. Back in March 2015, Scripps Networks Interactive paid €584M ($631M) to buy a majority stake in commercial network TVN and then shelled out the same amount for the rest a few months later. Three years later, Discovery bought Scripps for $14.6B and TVN entered the WBD fold on the merger of David Zaslav’s outfit and WarnerMedia in 2022.
In December 2024, the current Polish coalition government, led by pro-EU leader Donald Tusk, added TVN to a list of “strategic companies” that cannot be sold without its approval, amid fears of a hostile takeover and a sign of growing political unrest before elections in May. This came before Reuters in January reported WBD received at least three non-binding bids of around €1B for TVN Group, including one from the Berlusconi family’s MediaForEurope and another from Polish businessman Michal Solowow through his MS Galleon fund.
No-one at WBD is commenting on the record, but it’s fair to say the Polish political pendulum has swung in both directions in terms of its ownership. The former right-wing government had moved to ban foreign ownership of Polish media in 2021, with the situation settling after Tusk was sworn in as Prime Minister in December 2023. However, a far-right party alliance is currently polling at over 20% ahead of elections in May, so the future for media and entertainment is unclear.
Eberhardt’s only political focus is reflecting the feelings of the nation through Max’s shows, and establishing the streamer as a leading force in the SVOD market. With Netflix readying its big-ticket drama Heweliusz, Prime Video considering it a top emerging European growth driver and Disney+ shooting its first scripted series, Breslau, the challenge is significant. However, Eberhardt makes a compelling pitch for her streamer’s credentials.
“I am a big fan of creative competition, but in terms of production and business we are in a privileged position in Poland,” she says. “We have Max, the theatrical Warner Bros business and the TVN network, which has been on the market for 30 years with 25% share. We make 3,000 hours a year. We have absolutely incredible know-how and we are very competitive in terms of production budgets. We have the expertise, an in-house scripted production team and at the heart of our operation, our own development team. It is super unique to have our own script doctors, plus we have our own investigative journalists inside the company and a huge library of archive materials. This all gives us this an advantage over the competition.”
A further benefit is premiering TVN’s biggest entertainment shows – Max has launched local versions of The Traitors, So You Think You Can Dance, Got Talent and Hotel Paradise. Outside of the linear system, it last month premiered the Oscar-winning Latvian animation Flow, which will then launch on the linear HBO channel in May. “On top of an amazingly robust original production slate, we also have the content from linear channels and amazing resources from WBD,” says Eberhardt.
There are several studio deals in place, though most acquisitions are “cherry-picked” and tend to be for local Polish-language films. TVN produces films and these too can be piped through to Max should the pic fit the streamer’s focus.
The plan for 2025
Max has an originals slate of around 20 titles right now, all at different stages of development and production. Since launch last year, four scripted titles and three docs have rolled out, and this will increase to six scripted titles and four or five docs this year, depending on how filming progresses. Deadline understands the investment comes in at a healthy eight-figure dollar number, not an insignificant amount for the Polish market.
There is also more scope for co-production, a topic that will underpin this week’s big European event, Series Mania, in Lille, France. “It’s very much in Max strategy to own the IP and exclusivity is one of the key features globally,” but, having said that, when we look at the European market, we absolutely feel windowing and co-pros are the way into the future,” says Eberhardt. “Different platforms have different audiences, and the titles can work in different windows.”
Whatever form the budget takes, Ebehardt says the focus is to tell “tell important, current stories.” She cites potential in the number of displaced Ukrainians living in Poland following the Russian invasion and more in bubbling contemporary narratives around maternity and parenthood for scripted.
In docs, crime stories that highlight the past are in demand, with Eberhardt citing 33 Zdjęcia z Getta (33 Photos From the Ghetto), a feature from filmmaker Maciej Grzywaczewski, who learns a series of startling photographs taken in Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto during the Second World War and currently held at Washington’s Holocaust Museum were taken by his father. It will begin a six-month festival circuit in April on the anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising before landing on Max at the end of the year.
As for The Eastern Gate‘s second season, expectations are now sky-high. “We want it to surpass it, not only number-wise,” says Eberhardt. “The expectations for sequels are always higher from the audience, and ourselves. We want more drama, more characters, more twists and more great plots. We have to bring so much more, and that’s what makes it so challenging.”
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