If something scores big in Hollywood, it’s a safe bet that the the town will want more of it. The latest example is Heated Rivalry, the queer hockey drama that became a cultural phenomenon after hitting HBO Max over Thanksgiving. The show centering on two professional hockey players in a years-long steamy-turned-emotional secret affair averaged 9 million viewers per episode in the United States, per HBO Max, and instantly capitulated 20-something leads Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie to fame.
In its wake, writers, execs and reps are scrambling to understand what made the sleeper hit such a success — and how to repeat it.
“While a lot of people are saying, ‘We’d love a Heated Rivalry,’ what we try to do is look behind that and try to figure out what they mean behind that ask,” explains UTA media rights agent Mirabel Michelson, who reps romance juggernaut Ali Hazelwood.
Was it the queer romance? The hockey? The steamy sex scenes? All of the above? It depends on whom you ask, but TV writers are already using the momentum to try and sell their own projects to networks and streamers.
Connor Storrie (left) and Hudson Williams (right) in Heated Rivalry.
Crave/Bell Media
“We already have clients looking into [stories] similar [to Heated Rivalry],” one TV lit manager tells The Hollywood Reporter. “People are trying to tap into that.”
Another lit manager tells THR that soapy and romance titles are top of mind for studios and streamers in 2026. UTA is repping Like You, the debut romance novel from Tyler McCall that’s set to be released in 2027. The agency has described it as Heated Rivalry-esque, minus the queer element, centered around a pair of former prep school rivals reconnecting as adults.
Heated Rivlary, of course, did not exist in a vacuum. There’s already a robust market of romance novels, with sub-genres including gay romance, sports, specifically hockey, romance and, to put it frankly, smutty and explicit romance. Some, like Heated Rivalry, find themselves in all three worlds. Sports romance is perhaps the most popular space in the marketplace at the moment, but the genre itself is not a new phenomena. Heated Rivlary creator Jacob Tierney initially learned of Rachel Reid’s series of gay hockey novels from a Washington Post article about the popularity of hockey romance.
Some of these novels are now making their way to screens.
While not centered on queer characters, another hockey romance series, Off Campus, based on Elle Kennedy’s popular series of novels, is set to premiere on the Prime Video later this year. The series, which had already been heavily pushing itself out on social media before Heated Rivalry premiered, has already scored a second season order, months before the public has seen it.
Off Campus
Liane Hentscher/Prime
And Hazelwood’s debut novel, The Love Hypothesis, has been adapted into an upcoming Amazon MGM Studios feature starring Lili Reinhart. Much like Reid’s Game Changers series, Hazelwood’s mainly science academia romance novels are a favorite on BookTok, TikTok’s booming reading community.
It doesn’t, at this point, seem like the focus is exclusively on queer romance stories. Truthfully, Hollywood is long behind the curve when it comes to shows centering on gay couples. Long before Heated Rivalry, the genre Boys Love — popularized in Asia first through manga and now, particularly in Thailand, through television series — became a booming business. Networks will pair actors together and have them star as love interests in multiple shows, even sending them out on global fan tours to meet their adoring fans. Girls Love, centered around queer women, has also become popular in recent years.
But Heated Rivalry has pushed queer storytelling into the spotlight in a new way, proving just how popular such stories can be. “It’s certainly helpful when shows that have such diverse representation in that way are working, and people are tuning in, and we have the numbers for that. Buyers are less hesitant to say, ‘Will people watch this?’” Michelson explains. “Certainly, Heated Rivalry has helped pave the way for more stories like that to hopefully find a home.”
There’s more than one non-romance-related lesson Hollywood could stand to learn from the Canadian show’s success. Perhaps the biggest stems from the fact Heated Rivalry wouldn’t have been Heated Rivalry without its formidable leading men, Williams and Storrie. When the pair booked the series, they were both working as waiters. In three months, the actors have found themselves hitting Hollywood heartthrob status, walking in and sitting front row at global fashion weeks, presenting at Golden Globes and gaining a community of dedicated fans.
Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie.
The Cobra Snake
The success of Williams and Storrie is certainly due to the performances the men gave and the serious way they (and creator Tierney) portrayed a genre often written off as fluff. But what can be gleaned from the fanfare surrounding the actors is that viewers yearn for new, fresh-faced stars. Both Williams and Storrie have booked their first post-Heated Rivalry roles with Williams joining the Crave series Yaga and Storrie in talks for the A24 comedy Peaked. They’ll then film season two of Heated Rivalry this summer, which is aiming for a spring 2027 release.
The most philosophical lesson Hollywood can learn is ignoring what everyone’s been told is a safe bet. “Heated Rivalry is something that all the algorithms say would never work — and it does,” says one manager for writers and directors. “A lot of the conversation being like ‘fuck your algorithm, this is something great, so you should look at it with a different perspective.’”
—Ryan Gajewski, Mia Galuppo and Aaron Couch contributed to this story.
