It's no secret that 'Sex and the City' has been an overwhelming success. According to Box Office Mojo, the movie grossed $56,848,056 this last weekend. This is almost nothing more than found money for Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) as it gets to recycle its old content into a fresh new round of content, and it gets to do so at $8 to $10 per ticket. Add in the merchandise sales, future DVD sales, and the redistribution, and you have bonus bucks for the company.

So what's next? Seems pretty obvious to me.

'The Sopranos' was a monster success for Time Warner's HBO. As I noted last year before the finale of the Sopranos, "....it's hard to imagine "truly" killing off a major franchise...."

Tony lived at the end of the series, but it looked like a showdown over a bust or bloody restaurant shootout was imminent as the "leave you hanging" point for future releases.

The series has the same winning formula for success as Sex and the City: Characters that get talked about beyond the show, trend-setting themes, extreme audience loyalty, and so on.

Yep, this all points to Tony and whoever really is alive from the end of the season finale to head next to the big screen.

For Time Warner, the money is just too big and you don't have to be a mobster to do that math. Plus, this will be a movie that guys won't want to skip either. Don't fuggedaboutit...

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) decided the most obvious business strategy is the best business strategy: keep opportunities for a franchise open! After endless speculation about the fate of Tony Soprano, the series ended with the patriarch eating dinner with his family.

Phil Leotardo did get whacked after a partial betrayal in his own ranks with Tony Soprano's men tracking him down (with help of a small FBI tip), but you knew that Time Warner wasn't going for a new mob series called "The Leotardo's." But the show did end obliquely. Tony Soprano was left alive, although either an assassin or an FBI agent headed into the bathroom and two more unknown characters ominously entered the front of the building.

What is obvious is that even with an open ending, Tony's life is still in disarray and he is an easy target, even after winning the war with his enemy. His attorney said one of his old crew was turning state's evidence and there was an 80% or 90% chance of a federal indictment over an old gun charged lumped with a RICO case. Regardless, Time Warner made the savvy choice: Don't whack potential future profits. "THE END" isn't really ever the end if there is enough money at stake.

The media keeps talking about The Sopranos ending plus all of the wild predictions about who lives and who dies. There was a piece here Wednesday discussing that Bodog.com was hosting odds on the fate of Tony Soprano himself and the rest of crew. This has been discussed as something that could either potentially impact Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) because it owns HBO, and ultimately that it could impact Time Warber Cable (NYSE: TWC). Tying a major media conglomerate to one single show is like listening to the doomsday predictors: Maybe they'll be right one day, but they have been wrong every other time up to now.

Jim Cramer was just discussing this on CNBC a little while ago where he threw out the notion that The Sopranos coming to an end would put pressure on the company. He reminded us about how when The Sopranos went on a hiatus that it had no impact on real subscriber rates. Cramer further noted how Time Warner has been buying back stock and how well Parsons has been running the company. It should also be remembered that HBO has been a leader, and other cable and TV networks end up copying its success.

So you can go to Bodog to check the odds on Tony Soprano's ultimate fate, for entertainment only since U.S. citizens are crimped by Puritans making online gambling immoral and illegal. The betting money that has made it so far is giving Soprano himself a slim chance of survival, but if you believe in the "follow the money trail" you'd wonder why they would put a total and complete end to future "cameo episodes" or something of the like.

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) CEO Richard Parsons shouldn't turn HBO into a premium movie channel following Sunday's finale of The Sopranos as some on Wall Street had suggested.

There are just too many ways for people to watch uncut and unedited movies these days, ranging from video-on-demand to movie rentals to other cable channels. It's far too late for HBO to turn the clock back to the 1980s and 1990s when viewers were always able to count on one of the "Porky's" movies showing up on its broadcast schedule. The public expects more from HBO.

To be sure, The Sopranos will pay dividends for Time Warner for years to come from DVD sales, video-on-demand and possibly a movie or movies. An Associated Press story mentions that reruns of the crime drama boosted viewing on A&E. But die-hard fans of the drama won't stand for a cleaned-up version of the show forever. The novelty will wear off just as it has for Law & Order.

HBO needs to find a new hit to replace The Sopranos and needs it soon. Entourage is still great though I think it's running out of gas creatively and Real Time with Bill Maher continues to be entertaining. I saw the preview for the new drama John from Cincinnati on HBO.com and don't know quite what to make of it.

None of these programs, however, will be able to fill the hole left by The Sopranos, which was the main reason why many people subscribed to HBO. For consumers, there is a bright side because I suspect that cable companies will be offering huge discounts to keep HBO subscribers from bolting. That is only going to be a stopgap measure at best.

Moreover, rival Showtime, which toiled for years in HBO's shadow, has recently gotten much better. The channel is home to Weeds, one of the best shows on television. David Duchovny's new program Californication also looks interesting. Given a choice, I bet many viewers would keep the Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) pay channel over HBO.

HBO is facing these challenges without Chris Albrecht, the executive who helped make the network into the juggernaut it is today. Albrecht, who was responsible for hits including Sex and the City, was ousted last month following an arrest for domestic violence. The impact of his departure won't be noticeable on the programming for a while. Investors, however, may notice it much sooner on the company's balance sheet.

Now that the company's cable business is separated, Time Warner will count on its other businesses for profit growth even more than it did before. The company's Networks business, which also includes the Turner cable channels such as CNN, had revenue of $2.4 billion in the first quarter, little changed from a year earlier. Operating income rose 6% to $860 million, helped in part by increased subscribers at HBO.

Even though the challenges are tough, I am convinced HBO is up to them. The channel consistently attracts top-flight creative people and one of them will come up the next mega hit, though it may not happen immediately. The question is whether investors who are already not thrilled with Time Warner will be patient enough.

Otherwise, some big shot executives at the media conglomerate may get whacked.

It's been a heck of a run. Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) and its spin-off Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) have reaped many financial and publicity-related benefits with the HBO hit series The Sopranos. But as any mobster would tell you, all good things inevitably get whacked. Or do they?

Is HBO really going to kill off Tony Soprano? That's the question on everyone's lips, with only about 100 hours to go before the season's much-hyped finale. But apart from the character, do the companies behind the man want to kill off potential future revenue? There is plenty to be made at the end of the series, of course, including key DVD and boxed set sales. But the really big payoff remains: Tony Soprano. The public still doesn't know if he lives or dies. The same goes for the rest of his crew and his rivals, but Tony is the key since without him any derivatives would be called The Goombas.

So this might not be the end after all for Tony. Since this was a huge driver for Time's HBO unit, it is hard to believe HBO won't try to milk it with future offshoots or at least some cameo shows.

Regardless of who lives and dies in the finale of the mega-hit series, the chances of an offshoot series called The Leotardos" has a name set for failure. Most likely -- given the "follow the money" theory -- if Tony Soprano dies, Time Warner will decide that any future continuation of the series just doesn't merit the costs.