The Idol: Euphoria's Sam Levinson Reshot Over 80% Of The Weeknd's Upcoming HBO Show
Reshoots and pick-up shots are common practices throughout the entertainment industry, necessary to fix or augment the film or television series long after the original shoot has finished. Although relatively uncommon, sometimes it's necessary to reshoot entire episodes or large chunks of a film in order to get the project back on track. One great example is "Game of Thrones's" original unaired pilot, which was so infamously messy that almost all of that original footage had to be reshot before the premiere.
That said, it's extremely uncommon for an entire show to be reshot from scratch after being nearly complete — which is precisely what happened with Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye's upcoming HBO series, "The Idol." According to Deadline, production of "The Idol" underwent a major creative overhaul back in April 2022 when director Amy Seimetz (who was originally hired to direct all six episodes of the series) exited the project and was replaced by "Euphoria" creator Sam Levinson, who co-created the series alongside Tesfaye and Reza Fahim.
Another report stated that "The Idol's" creative team had "aligned on a new creative direction," and a later report stated that Seimetz had allegedly filmed material for several episodes at the time that she was replaced. It sounds like all or most of that footage was scrapped when the team resumed filming.
Tesfaye allegedly felt that the series leaned too far into a female perspective
Reshooting from scratch after already filming five episodes of a six-episode series is certainly a tall order. However, the report makes it clear that this shift in direction was necessary to more accurately follow the vision of Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye.
The aforementioned follow-up report from Deadline (in which it was explained that "Red Rocket" star Suzanna Son would also be exiting the series) alleged that the reason for this massive overhaul was Tesfaye's fear that the show was leaning too far into a "female perspective" in regards to Lily-Rose Depp's character — the titular pop idol who ends up in a relationship with Tesfaye's modern-day cult leader.
Correcting this shift into the "female perspective" apparently required a complete creative overhaul, with a spokeswoman for HBO saying: "'The Idol's' creative team continues to build, refine, and evolve their vision for the show... the production will be adjusting its cast and crew accordingly to best serve this new approach to the series." Although we'll perhaps never know how much of the show was actually reshot once Amy Seimetz exited the show, it certainly sounds like the production started back at square one to return to Tesfaye's original vision for the series.