Earthshattering news. Today, Warner Bros. Discovery rebranded the streaming service as Max, which will combine original programming from HBO Max and Discovery+. It’s like The Beverly Hillbillies moving into their mansion.
“From the biggest superheroes to real-life champions; from culture-shaping dramas to taste-shaping entertainment; from fantastical realms to the realest of worlds, Max will offer an unrivaled range of choice,” JB Perrette, the president and CEO of streaming and games for Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a statement. “This new brand signals an important change from two narrower products, HBO Max and discovery+, to our broader content offering and consumer proposition.”
The launch comes a year after WarnerMedia and Discovery completed its $43 billion merger, with the combined company led by CEO David Zaslav. Part of his plan was to create a streaming service that can compete with Netflix and Disney+. This means combining HBO’s celebrated scripted programming such as House of the Dragon with Discovery’s profitable reality content like Moonshiners.
Good-bye Succession. Hello, Alaskan Bush People.
REELated:
The hope for the branding change is to appeal to a broader audience, who may consider HBO too lofty and costly. To date, WBD has 96.1 million streaming subscribers across HBO, HBO Max and Discovery+. This lags behind Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Prime, Fubo and even YouTube.
Ahead of the launch, WBD’s chief financial officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels, said in March at an investor conference that the new streaming service would be “absolutely critical.” “For the first time, we’re going to be able to put all the content together,” Wiedenfels said at a Morgan Stanley investor event. “We believe that that’s going to have positive impacts on engagement, on churn, on subscriber acquisition.”
The service will debut on May 23. Meaning, we can choose between Barry, Last Week with John Oliver or Alaska: Goldrush.
“Come and listen to a story ’bout a man named Jed…”
