if you love HBO Max Like we do, you’re probably under a lot of stress. A nightmare situation unfolds for people this week HBO Max and Discovery Plus Merger, But at the Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 Earnings Call today (Thursday, August 4), we found reason for measured optimism.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated as of Earnings Call.
Yep, in case you haven’t heard, the Discovery acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T, which led to a new name Warner Bros. Discovery, means we’re going to get a service that combines the two. Or so we thought.
HBO Max gets lead in Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 earnings call
After WBD CEO and President David Zaslav spoke at the same company for “combining the rich legacies” of Warner Bros. and Discovery, he reiterated his intention to “bring HBO Max and Discovery Plus” into a single offering. But the big moment came from JB Perrett, CEO and President of Global Streaming & Games.
While both Zaslav Peret explained that we would need to wait for the planned Investor Day event for the end of the year, Perret and his slides pushed HBO Max harder than you might expect, regarding HBO Max. The concerns were reduced to a simple one. HBO.
A slide for a global product shows the large HBO Max and Discovery Plus logos at the bottom of the tablets announcing that they will remain under a “single global brand”. Interestingly, the service will have both “on demand and live” capability as well as “ad-free, ad-lite and ad-only options”. There will be multiple levels, which will obviously add to the game.
Later, an executive said they would “double down” on HBO, another reason to think HBO Max has a strong future.
Then, another slide showed WBD’s schedule for both services, suggesting that the US would first get the service in the summer of 2023. It will debut in Latin America, with Europe in early 2024, and the Asia-Pacific markets in mid. 2024.
All of the major HBO Max branding placements in this presentation indicate that the HBO Max brand and service will remain in this new service – even if it is under the Discovery Plus branding.
HBO Max concerns explained
So, Why We Were Worried About HBO Max (Which We Still Believe) best streaming service, Amidst much uproar on Tuesday (August 2) HBO Max’s Batgirl movie is being canceled Warner put $90 million in it and reported that Six HBO Max original movies have disappeared from serviceOther shoes started falling.
Tony Maglio et IndieWire (opens in new tab) It was then reported that there were more cuts to come, and it’s all due to cut costs as they merge HBO Max and Discovery Plus, question, of course How Are they going to merge these two services?
then on Wednesday afternoon wrap (opens in new tab) That dropped a shocking new report, which says that “HBO Max’s growth is expected to be particularly hard hit with layoffs with two sources accounting for 70% of the cut of dev staff.” An insider told The Wrap that HBO’s “staff are ‘all upset’ and ‘I know they’re adding HBO Max to HBO, and there will be redundancies.'”
Some of that may still happen, but we have less confidence in that report than ever before.
Before that, we only heard a rumor from Beyond the Trailer YouTuber Grace Randolph. credited as Randolph Insider by some (opens in new tab)whereas James Gunno (opens in new tab) Don’t seem to trust him, say it politely. And her rumor seems to be more true now than ever.
Nightmare Scenario for HBO Max Fans
Ahead of Warner Bros. Discovery’s second-quarter earnings on Thursday (August 4), Randolph tweeted (opens in new tab) A list of ideas that were “RUMOR re the #WBD presentation”. None of these views were presented.
Randolph claimed that HBO Max would become a part of Discovery Plus, “probably in the form of #HBO Tab” and that the new service would “get rid of #HBOMax scripted, with overall streaming focused on the unscripted.”
This would basically force loyal HBO Max customers to buy a new (potentially more expensive) streaming service to get access to the shows and movies they love, while possibly getting less than the content they’d love. We do.
It also doesn’t speak to whether licensed HBO Max content — seasons of Friends, Studio Ghibli movies and more — will end. Inside that new “HBO” tab? Given that HBO Max’s branding is strong in WBD, it seems likely that such a tab would have a moniker.
HBO Max has become a section in a new app?
What will happen next? Rapp quoted a Hollywood agent with knowledge of the plans as saying that “HBO is pretty safe. If it was ‘Game of Thrones,’ Casey Bloys would win.”
Yes, HBO Max re-invested in the man behind its content: Casey Bloys, HBO and HBO Max’s chief content officer. a Diversity (opens in new tab) A July 2022 report stated that Bloys signed a new five-year contract with Warner Bros. But just think like a cost-cutting executive and look at his split titles. Why has he played content from both HBO and HBO Max, while he can play just one?
So it looks like Bloys is coming back to run a potentially smaller-budget solo team. WBD is swinging the cancellation ax on multiple scripted programming, including TNT snowpiercerTBS’ The Last Ozzy and HBO Max made for love,
Few HBO Max shows can survive under the HBO brand, as Bloys has publicly stated flight attendant season 3 Definitely possible. We’re hoping that Peacemaker, Harley Quinn, Our Flag Means Death and Hacks are among the shows that survive.
After the presentation we are more likely to believe that the HBO Max brand is still valuable.
Outlook: What happens next
The big question with Warner Bros. Discovery executives is “which streaming service is more important?” Now that Warner Bros. Discovery has made its Q2 presentation, we get the impression that it values both streaming service highly.
Comparing HBO Max and Discovery Plus is like comparing apples and pineapples. The former is mainly composed of scripted programming, and the latter is mostly unscripted content.
In the end, it’s now the company of Discovery. And it’s hard to imagine that they want to make their service a tab inside someone else’s app. That said, we’d rather see a Discovery Plus hub in HBO Max than an HBO tab in the Discovery Plus app. HBO Max sounds like a brand that could fit Discovery inside it, right?
As we knew, a single, new streaming service is on the way to include both Discovery Plus and HBO Max. The question of which side “wins” will be debated, but for now, it looks like HBO Max is a futuristic brand. But it’s all optics. What matters more is how much this new service costs (price hikes seem inevitable).
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