Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
HBO Max wants to help you sleep, and it’s enlisting Mahershala Ali, Idris Elba, Keanu Reeves, and a handful of other celebrities to make it happen.
WarnerMedia’s streaming service has ordered A World of Calm, an adaptation of the popular Calm app, which offers various stories for relaxation and sleep aid. Here’s the series’ synopsis, per HBO Max: A timely antidote for our modern lives, each half-hour episode takes audiences on an immersive visual journey into another world.
Building on the record-breaking success of Calm’s Sleep Stories — bedtime stories for grown-ups with over 250 million listens — each relaxing tale is designed to transform how you feel. Transporting the viewer into tranquility through scientifically-engineered narratives, enchanting music and astounding footage, to naturally calm your body and soothe the mind. Each story is brought to life by a different iconic voice.
Those voices include Oscar Isaac, Nicole Kidman, Zoë Kravitz, Lucy Liu, and Cillian Murphy, in addition to the aforementioned stars.
“With the considerable amount of stress and chaos we are all experiencing at this particularly challenging time, we could all use a bit of guided relaxation and A World of Calm is here to help,’” Jennifer O’Connell, executive vice president of non-fiction and kids programming for HBO Max, said in a statement. “With soothing imagery and tranquil narration, this is one HBO Max original that we hope becomes part of your daily routine.
The series is co-produced by Calm and Nutopia. Nicola Moody, Michael Acton Smith, Chris Advansun, and Nutopia CEO and founder Jane Root serve as executive producers, while Sara Brailsford and Fiona Caldwell serve as co-executive producers.
“We are thrilled to work with such amazing partners as HBO Max and Calm for this new cutting-edge endeavor,” Nutopia CEO and founder Jane Root said in a statement. “Although this collaboration has been in the works for many months, this series has been entirely created during quarantine using Nutopia’s worldwide network of award-winning cinematographers and filmmakers. We hope this series of serene stories will bring a sense of much needed calm to audiences.”
WarnerMedia’s HBO Max launched in late May and has announced a variety of upcoming projects from typical genres such as science fiction, comedies, and drama. The streaming service has billed A World of Calm as its first foray into the health and wellness space; time will tell if the upcoming sleep aid series kicks off a new trend on WarnerMedia’s growing platform.
