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WBD is relenting on trying to get everyone to sign up for its streaming service. The new logo looks familiar. Warner Bros. Discovery's (WBD) streaming service Max will be called HBO Max starting this summer, bringing back a name that WBD curiously ditched a couple of years ago. In May 2020, the company then known as WarnerMedia Group launched its flagship streaming service, HBO Max. The successor to the HBO Now subscription-based streaming service that launched in 2014, and not to be confused with the now-defunct HBO Go (which was a video-on-demand streaming service accessible to those with subscriptions to the HBO cable channel), HBO Max offered “the entire HBO service,” per WarnerMedia’s announcement. HBO Max also combined content from other titles WarnerMedia owned, including titles from DC Comics and Cartoon Network. But the main draw continued to be the ability to stream HBO’s prestigious library via a Netflix-like streaming subscription. When WarnerMedia acquired Discovery in 2022 and became WBD, it sought to combine the libraries of HBO Max and the Discovery+ streaming service. WBD landed on Max as the name for the combined app. The name seemed to suggest access to a maximum amount of streaming content with maximum appeal. However, it questionably distanced itself from the legacy of high-budget, award-winning TV shows and recent popular movies that the HBO brand had been building since 1972. Max wasn’t just about pushing the high-end stuff you’d expect from HBO but also reality shows from Discovery, including 90 Day Fiancé and Naked and Afraid. WBD CEO David Zaslav’s management team “concluded that the ‘HBO’ in the name positioned the general entertainment service as slightly too rarified to match rivals like Disney+ or Netflix,” Deadline reported at the time. Today, Zaslav and company are doing an about-face, with the CEO saying that WBD is “bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate” the streaming service’s “growth in the years ahead.” WBD's announcement added that “returning the HBO brand into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the offering.” “It is also a testament to WBD’s willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach—leaning heavily on consumer data and insights—to best position itself for success,” the media conglomerate claimed. “Not everything for everyone” The announcement is a result of WBD rethinking its streaming strategy as leadership acknowledges that it failed to sell Max as an essential streaming service. Last month, executives admitted that Max is viewed as more of an add-on service, per The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Executives said at the time that they no longer want to try to push their streaming service as something for every member of the household. “What people want from us in a world where they’ve got Netflix and Amazon [Prime Video] are those things that differentiate us,” Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max content, told WSJ. The strategy pivot since has included moving further away from children’s programming and some Discovery content, like shows from the Food Network and HGTV. There have also been reports of WBD exploring splitting Discovery from Max. “We’re not fighting for the more-is-better game,” JB Perrette, WBD's streaming president and CEO, told WSJ. “We’ll let others deal with the volume.” In today’s announcement, Perrette doubled down on those sentiments: Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

“Did I just watch a 70 minute trailer for Season 3?” is just one of the reactions fans have posted online about the season's "disappointing and poorly executed" closer. YouTuber Preston Jacobs wasted no time when he started his House of the Dragon after-party livestream: “I’m going to say right up [top], I think at this point this is my jump-the-shark moment. I don’t think that this show is salvageable anymore.” Sunday’s season finale, he says, “really ruins everything.” Plotlines contradicted each other, some story arcs went nowhere, he said. It was a mess. And while Preston has had divisive Game of Thrones opinions in the past, on this point, lots of fans agreed with him—both in his livestream’s comments and across the internet. This is not the place for House of the Dragon Season 2 finale spoilers—you’ll have to watch for yourself for that—but the long and short of it is that the episode abruptly ended just when it was starting to get good. After weeks of promoting a major battle between the Greens and the Blacks of the Targaryen family tree, no such battle materialized. As The Hollywood Reporter put it, “HBO cutting to black hasn’t annoyed this many TV fans since The Sopranos ended.” The Sopranos comparison is both hyperbolic and little apropos. House of the Dragon is far from the beloved critical darling that Sopranos was, but it does now get the kind of scrutiny that its prestige predecessor once did. Following Game of Thrones’ womp-womp 2019 series finale some fans have hoped House could regain some of its predecessor's former glory, while others worried it would make the same mistakes. Sunday’s episode seemed to indicate to many it might be all dragons, no fire. “Y’all basically made this season a build up now we gotta wait a whole fkn 2 years” for the next season, wrote @Tata_Onika on X, referring to rumors that the next season won’t come until at least 2026. “Really pissed me off,” wrote another X user. “Did I just watch a 70-minute trailer for Season 3?” asked another—a sentiment that others echoed. Over on Reddit, fans were “mildly butthurt” and lamenting, “I didn’t see a CRUMB of consequential action.” Another personal fave: “We had to deal with Freud dreams for this?!!” Season 2’s finale may also be a sign of the times. HBO, Max, and all of its affiliated properties have been going through a lot of upheaval since parent company Warner Bros. merged with Discovery. While big shows like Dragon and The Last of Us haven’t been hit as hard as other properties, this season was only eight episodes, whereas last season was 10, and this one was shot during the Hollywood strikes, thanks in part to many of its cast being in a different union that wasn’t striking. Deadline also reported last year that a “major battle” was moved from Season 2 to Season 3, and in so doing the show may have been left with a humdrum finale. Will House of the Dragon recover? Eh, probably. Season 2 already didn’t quite hit the viewership heights the show’s first season hit. But as the streaming wars continue and people drop services or contemplate, in the case of Max, switching to ad-based tiers that are also going up in price, comparing one season’s numbers to another’s feels like a fool’s errand. HBO greenlit a third season—cocreator Ryan Condal revealed Monday it’ll end with the fourth season—which could very well open with the confrontation fans had hoped for. Until then, everyone is just going to have to wait while this drags on. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every single day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of July): 3,313 news posts

HBO Max’s Clone High brings back all of the original cloned historical figures and adds a couple new ones in its first teaser. Twenty years ago, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Bill Lawrence’s Clone High ended on a cliffhanger that left all of its teenaged clones of famous historical figures flash-frozen by John Stamos on their prom night. Today, HBO Max decided to start thawing those same clones out. Ahead of its debut this spring, HBO Max just dropped the first teaser trailer for the Clone High revival, which seems like it’s going to pick right back up where the original MTV series left off. Though Gandhi won’t be coming back in the new show, all it takes is a little bit of heat from a set of blow-dryers to unfreeze the teenaged versions of Abe Lincoln (Will Forte), Joan of Arc (Nicole Sullivan), JFK (Chris Miller), and Cleopatra (Mitra Jouhari) — all of whom are pawns in their school’s plot to overthrow various world governments. While none of the clones really know about “Operation Spread Eagle” and how they factor into it, the trailer makes clear that the revival will follow them back to school, where they continue to unwittingly reveal which of them’s fittest to be sent out into the world as a disruptive sleeper agent. The trailer also gives off the impression that the new Clone High’s going to give a lot more screentime to the series’ other clones like Harriet Tubman (Ayo Edebiri), Frida Kahlo (Vicci Martinez), Confucius (Kelvin Yu), and Sacagawea (Jana Schmieding), which hopefully means that when the show premieres in the next few weeks, it won’t simply feel like a rehash. HBO Max’s Clone High teaser reminds us that everything that’s old is new again

As highly anticipated, Warner Bros Discovery has announced Max, its new streaming service that will combine content from two of its current services, HBO Max and Discovery Plus. Max will officially launch on May 23 in the US. The service will include the library of titles from HBO, Discovery Plus, and other Warner Bros. Discovery movies and TV shows. It will also be the home for a number of Max Original series, including The Penguin, a spinoff of 2022's movie The Batman. The service will also host new spinoff shows based on The Big Bang Theory and The Conjuring. Max will also be the home to a new series based on the Harry Potter novels, with each season adapting one of the fantasy books. There will also be a new Rick and Morty series, but in a Japanese anime art style, that will debut on Max. Also, Tiny Toons Looniversity, a reboot of Tiny Toons Adventures, is on its way, along with an animated Gremlins series. There will be three pricing plans for Max. The ad-based plan will remain from HBO Max for $9.99 a month, with HD resolution and two concurrent streams per account. The ad-free plan will also remain at $15.99 a month, but it will be limited to HD resolutions and two concurrent streams, along with a limit of 30 offline downloads. The third plan is called the Ultimate Plan. It will cost $19.99 a month and will support 4K resolution with Dolby Atmos audio along with four concurrent streams and 100 offline downloads. If you are already an HBO Max subscriber, your app will either automatically update to the new Max app or you will download the new app. Either way, current HBO Max profiles, account info, and more will automatically migrate to the new Max app. HBO Max users will be able to keep their Max subscription at the same price for at least six months after May 24. If you have signed up to use HBO on your cable or internet TV service, you will still be able to get Max at no additional cost. Max will launch in the US at first and will expand internationally in the coming months. Discovery Plus will remain a separate service from Max. HBO Max morphs into Max on May 23 and will add a new $19.99 Premium plan

In 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to merge its HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming services. Now, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, those plans have changed, and both services will remain separate, at least for now. What happened? According to the article, which uses unnamed sources, the company felt that current Discovery+ subscribers, who pay $4.99 a month for the service with ads and $6.99 a month without ads, would obviously not like it if they had to pay a lot more money per month if it merged with HBO Max. Warner Bros. Discovery has already been making preparations for the merger, adding in Discovery+ content to HBO Max and vice versa. It also got rid of a number of movies and TV shows from HBO Max in 2022, including some that were exclusive to the service, in order to save money from paying out royalties. The new plan, according to the WSJ, is to keep Discovery+ as a separate streaming service. HBO Max will reportedly be renamed to Max as part of a spring revamp of that service, which will allegedly still combine content from that service and Discovery Plus. HBO Max currently charges subscribers $9.99 a month with ads and $15.99 a month without ads. It's also available at no additional cost for people who include HBO in their cable and satellite TV plans. Warner Bros. Discovery has also sent a number of its streaming shows to free streaming outlets like Tubi and The Roku Channel, and it also plans to launch a free, ad-based, streaming service later this year. That announced HBO Max-Discovery+ merger might not happen after all

Following the exit of one of its co-showrunners, HBO Max’s forthcoming Dune: The Sisterhood show is losing a star as well as a director. Actress Shirley Henderson at a special screening of Stan & ollie. Photo by Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic Dune: The Sisterhood — HBO Max’s Dune prequel series about the origins of the Bene Gesserit — already appeared to be in a bit of trouble back when it lost its original co-showrunners, hired two more, and then lost one again. Now, though, things seem to be getting worse. Deadline reports that actress Shirley Henderson, one of Dune: The Sisterhood’s lead actresses, and director Johan Renck, who was slated to direct the first two episodes, have both decided to pull out of Dune: The Sisterhood just as the show enters a lengthy production hiatus. In a statement to Deadline, an HBO Max spokesperson emphasized that The Sisterhood’s hiatus had already been scheduled before two of the series’ key figures chose to part ways with the project, and that “there are some creative changes being made to the production in an effort to create the best series possible and stay true to the source material. “Johan Renck has completed his work on the series and a new director will be brought on; through mutual agreement, Johan is moving on to pursue other projects,” the streamer said. Originally, Henderson was slated to portray Tula Harkonnen, one of the founding members of Dune’s Bene Gesserit order that arises from another, older secretive group of women power players who operate in the shadows. The role of Tula will reportedly be recast, and current showrunner Alison Schapker’s team may have time to put more finishing touches on the series scripts. But from the outside looking in, it’s feeling like Dune: The Sisterhood could be in rather dire straits. HBO Max’s Dune series has lost a lead actress and a director

After a brutal year of restructuring, layoffs, and tax write-offs stemming from disappeared content, Warner Bros. Discovery says it’s turning a new leaf. Just last month, Warner Bros. Discovery followed up on its decision to cancel Westworld by full-on yanking the show from HBO Max — a drastic, money-saving decision that was yet another part of CEO David Zaslav’s grand plan to get the company back in the black. Now, though, Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels says the entertainment conglomerate is getting ready to shift gears and put more of its energies into creating new things rather than tearing apart what already exists. Speaking at Citibank’s annual Communications, Media & Entertainment Conference today, Wiedenfels was adamant about 2023 being a year of “relaunching and building,” Variety reports. Wiedenfels said that Warner Bros. Discovery felt the need to take “a little bit of time to make sure that we do it properly,” in reference to last year’s gradual culling of titles from HBO Max’s library, and that “we’ve come to great solutions” — alluding to the company’s plans for some of its content to move to other services. In order to properly move forward, Wiedendels insisted, WBD had to get its cost-saving cancellations out of the way first. “That was very important to all of us, to really use 2022 to leave the purchase accounting behind us, leave those initial strategy changes behind us, get it all out there in terms of our restructuring estimates and then be able to turn the page forward,” Wiedendels said. “I think the team has laid a great foundation, and I’m really excited about the growth from here.” The idea of HBO Max — which is set to become a new service once it fully merges with Discovery Plus — going through a growth spurt sounds a bit dubious after a year of watching the service lose so many of its series. But Wiedenfels said that every cost-cutting measure that Warner Bros. Discovery took in 2022 was “a reflection of an industry that went overboard and went on a spending frenzy” at a time when “there was a lot of thinking of, ‘let’s do more, more, more,’ not necessarily ‘let’s do the exact right things, let’s do what works.’” It’s certainly nice to hear that WBD doesn’t plan on further scorching the earth with content write-offs as it gears up to launch HBO Max and Discovery’s successor sometime this spring. But Zaslav’s WBD is one that operates like a business focused on profit above anything else, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if the write-offs were actually over just yet. Warner Bros. Discovery says it’s done killing shows and movies just for tax write-offs

The more neutral name is intended to protect the premium HBO brand. Longtime AT&T executive John Stankey, who became CEO in July 2020, speaks onstage at the HBO Max WarnerMedia Investor Day on October 29, 2019, in Burbank, California. Getty Images | Presley Ann By now, you may have heard that the two major TV streaming services run by Warner Bros. Discovery (HBO Max and Discovery+) are set to merge soon. Thanks to a new report from CNBC, we now have a good inkling of what the new combined service will be called. The historically reliable financial publication cites sources familiar with the matter who say Warner Bros. Discovery lawyers are vetting the name "Max," which the company's executives have chosen for the service. It notes that the name could still change but that Max is "the likely choice" and that boots are on the proverbial ground trying to make it a reality. Until now, the company's leaders have called the new service by the temporary codename "BEAM" internally. The name change could help to resolve a perplexing history for the HBO brand that viewers have grappled with in recent years. For ages, the HBO cable channel's name was associated with premium shows and films that were notably distinct from much of the other content on television. But as streaming technology took off, there was confusion over exactly what the difference was between the HBO cable network's two streaming services: HBO Go and HBO Now. (Go required customers to sign up via a traditional cable provider, whereas Now was a fully digital service that did not require a cable subscription.) Then came HBO Max, which merged HBO content with shows and films from some (but not all) of the other properties owned by the conglomerate, such as DC Comics, Cartoon Network, Warner Bros. films, and so on. While HBO Max likely benefitted from the prestige brand recognition of the HBO name, company executives reportedly worried that the name's cachet would be diluted because it now covered a wider range of content. With even more content coming under the streaming service's umbrella with the coming Discovery+ merger, a name change to Max would allow HBO to keep its unique identity while retaining some part of the HBO Max name to (maybe) avoid confusing existing customers. In other words: It's all been a bit of a mess that's been getting messier by the day, and Warner Bros. Discovery is taking the service merge as an opportunity to more or less hit a reset button on the whole affair. When Max launches, it will add Discovery+'s library of content from networks like the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, HGTV, Food Network, CNN, and A&E (among others) to what we've already seen in HBO Max, making for one of the most robust libraries of original content on any streaming service. The new service's interface will be broken into clear sections based on brand. That's similar to Disney+, which draws lines between shows and films from the Marvel, Star Wars, Disney, and National Geographic brands, among others. Max (if that is indeed its name) is slated to launch in spring 2023. There have been no announcements about its pricing, but HBO Max and Discovery+ cost $14.99 and $6.99 monthly for their ad-free tiers. When HBO Max and Discovery+ merge, they’ll have a new name

The trailer’s final scene features a clip of fungus-infected humans emerging from a pit of fire. HBO’s official trailer for The Last of Us shows off the dynamic between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as the two traverse a post-apocalyptic US amidst the outbreak of a mutant fungus that turns humans into zombie-like beings. It offers a much more detailed look at the dangers the two come across when compared to the previous teaser, including a brief glimpse at the infected themselves. Like the PlayStation game of the same name, the series has Joel escorting Ellie, who’s immune to the fungus, across the country in hopes of finding a cure for the outbreak. The trailer flashes between scenes of dialogues showcasing Storm Reid as Ellie’s friend Riley and Nick Offerman as Bill. At the end of the trailer, we see a swath of barnacle-covered beings crawling up from out of a fire pit before they start dashing toward the camera. From what I can tell, it looks like the show has stayed true to the design of the fungal zombies and did a phenomenal job casting, which makes the series seem all the more promising. If you watch this trailer closely enough, you might even spot Ellie’s voice actress in the game, Ashley Johnson, playing Ellie’s mother. The Last of Us comes from Chernobyl creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. It lands on HBO Max on January 15th, 2023. The new Last of Us trailer shows what Ellie and Joel are up against

Warner Bros Discovery is so pleased with the progress of the merger that it now wants to launch the new app in the spring of 2023. In an earnings call today, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that the merging of HBO Max and Discovery Plus was going so well that the target date for the launch of the new service would be moving from summer 2023 to spring 2023. From their user interface to their backend to their content, the two services are extraordinarily different, with HBO Max likely leading Discovery Plus in subscriptions as it had approximately 76.8 million users in April before the acquisition, and the combined services now have 94.9 million subscribers. But Zaslav’s plan has always been to merge the two services, which his team views as targeting very different markets. Early this year, a slide claiming HBO Max skewed male and Discovery Plus skewed female offended users of both services even while reinforcing Zaslav’s view on the matter. Zaslav, as I’ve noted before, isn’t particularly concerned with who gets offended in his quest to make Warner Bros. Discovery a profitable company. On the earnings call, he noted that when the show Fixer Upper: The Castle premiered on HBO Max, it quickly moved into the top five most watched shows on the service, confirming WBD’s “thesis” that a combined app will be more successful and drive more subscriptions and less churn. The show also aired on the Magnolia Network and streamed on Discovery Plus. It’s Zaslav’s hope that this merged app will drive not just increased subscriptions but also significantly higher advertising revenue. As for the content coming to the new service, the plan is to spend even more money on new content. “We’re leaning in,” he said on the call. Though he noted early in the call that “It’s no longer about how much, it’s about how good.” To that end, he also mentioned the content abruptly pulled from WBD’s services earlier this year. The removals happened so suddenly they often surprised even the show creators themselves. “We didn’t take one show off the platform that was gonna help us in any way,” Zaslav said, noting that WBD was directing the money saved toward new content. This is likely great to hear if you have a new Game of Thrones pitch but absolutely lousy if you’re one of the many animation creators who saw their shows disappear overnight. The date of the big HBO Max and Discovery Plus merger moved up

"The enemy without may be fought with swords. The enemy within is more insidious." House of the Dragon returns to HBO Max for an action-packed second season next month. The second season of House of the Dragon premieres in about a month and we've got one final action-packed trailer to boost anticipation. While the first season felt smaller and quieter—in a good way, more focused on character relationships and political maneuvering—the show seems to be pulling out all the stops in S2 as all-out war breaks out in the legendary "Dance of Dragons." As previously reported, the series is set nearly 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and chronicles the beginning of the end of House Targaryen's reign. The primary source material is Fire and Blood, a fictional history of the Targaryen kings written by George R.R. Martin. As book readers know, those events culminated in a civil war and the extinction of the dragons—at least until Daenerys Targaryen came along. (Spoilers for S1 below.) The first season spanned many years and made some pretty significant time jumps, which required replacing the younger actors as their characters aged. The S1 finale brought Westeros to the brink of civil war. King Viserys (Paddy Considine) died, and his second wife, Alicent (Olivia Cooke), conspired with her father, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), to crown her eldest son, Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), as king instead of Viserys' declared heir apparent, Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy). This kicked off a lot of political maneuvering as both sides tried to shore up support for their chosen heir in preparation for the inevitable fight. Even though she was technically the rightful heir, Rhaenyra actually seemed to be considering House Hightower's conditions for concession—until the arrogant Prince Aemon (Ewan Mitchell), Alicent's younger son, went after Rhaenyra's young son, Lucerys (Elliot Grihault). Both dragonriders failed to control their dragons, and Aemon's much bigger dragon, Vhagar, gobbled up poor Lucerys and his little dragon, Arrax, in mid-air. The season closed with Rhaenyra and her husband/uncle Daemon (Matt Smith) receiving the devastating news, effectively dashing any hope of a peaceful resolution. The first teaser for S2 dropped in December during CCXP23 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. We got the expected footage of dragons and dragonriders, a beheading, troops gathering and getting wiped out by dragon fire, and Rhaenyra and Aemon facing enemies with their dragons. And we also had a brief glimpse of a particularly brutal plot point in the source material that we already know closes out S2 (i.e., the "Blood and Cheese" incident, well-known to book readers). The studio followed up in March with two trailers, each presenting the perspective of one side in the bloody conflict, with viewers encouraged to "choose a side"—the Blacks or the Greens. This latest trailer opens with Rhaenyra in voiceover: "The Targaryen who sits on the Iron Throne is not just a king or a queen. They are a protector of the realm. Now I find myself in an impossible position. The enemy usurped my throne." Both Blacks and Greens are preparing for war, and while Alicent and other council members advise caution and dignity, King Aegon, aka the Usurper, is having none of it. He wants revenge. As for the other great houses, which side will they choose in the coming conflict? Daemon insists that "the realm's only hope is in a leader strong enough to unite it." But does he mean his wife/niece or himself? Cue a tense scene between the two in which Rhaenyra bluntly asks, "Do you accept me as your queen and ruler?" Meanwhile, Alicent is having second thoughts, convinced that the "senseless" war must end. Sure, she wants their side to win and her son to sit on the Iron Throne, but she doesn't want to win "like this." This does not earn the respect of Aemon, who declares that his mother's "love" for their enemy (aka Rhaenyra) makes her a "fool." There are still dragons galore and exciting battles, but our characters will also be struggling with their inner demons. As Larys Strong observed in another voiceover, "The enemy without may be fought with swords. The enemy within is more insidious." The second season of House of the Dragon premieres on HBO Max on June 16, 2024. Listing image by YouTube/HBO Max Source

Warner Bros. Discovery reported its Q2 2023 earnings, revealing a drop of 1.8 million total streaming subscribers across HBO Max, Discovery+ and the new service Max. The company now has 95.8 million streaming subscribers globally, down from 97.6 million in Q1. The loss is attributed mainly to account overlaps, as some customers canceled extra subscriptions after merging HBO Max and Discovery+ into Max. Max launched in May. And WBD's streaming president, J.B. Perrette, stated that 70% of existing HBO Max subscribers moved over to the new platform in the first week. Discovery+, however, lost subscribers during the transition. The Q2 period covers April 1 to June 30, so Max's results were only a partial factor. The upcoming Q3 report will fully reflect Max's impact. Total Q2 revenues were $10.36 billion, slightly below forecasts of $10.46 billion. Warner Bros. Discovery saw a net loss of $1.24 billion, increased from $1.07 billion last quarter. The company has paid down $9 billion in debt since the merger, including $1.6 billion in Q2. Max now also offers live sports and news streaming, though details are still limited. WBD previously predicted U.S. streaming would turn a profit this year, but it remains to be seen how the merger and Max transition will impact that timeline. In earning call report, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said: We remain bullish with respect to our delevering story and expect to be comfortably below 4.0x levered by the end of the year and at our target of 2.5-3.0x gross leverage by the close of 2024. [It] is tracking well ahead of our financial projections, having generated positive EBITDA in the first half of the year. The earnings report provides key insights into how WBD is progressing after merging HBO Max and Discovery+, as investors watch closely to gauge Max's success. While streaming subscriptions dipped post-merger, WBD expressed confidence in the ongoing Max rollout. Source

Only James Cameron gets an exception to streaming fragmentation. Avatar: The Way of Water is landing on not one but two streaming services on June 7th. In a press release on Monday, Warner Bros. Discovery shared that the James Cameron film is coming to the company’s combined Max streaming service in addition to Disney Plus. It’s a bit of a rarity to see a high-profile film like Avatar make its debut on more than one streaming service at a time, but it seems the shared premiere is all thanks to a modified agreement Disney made with WarnerMedia in 2021. Under the terms of the deal, HBO Max (soon-to-be Max) can share the rights to films Disney’s 20th Century Studios released in 2022 with Hulu and Disney Plus. The Way of Water first hit theaters in December 2022, and it proved to be another huge hit for Cameron: according to Warner Bros. Discovery, the movie is now the “third highest-grossing film of all time worldwide.” (The first Avatar holds the top spot.) And the addition of The Way of Water could be a boon for the company as it aims to get people onboarded with its new Max streaming service, which launches on May 23rd. That said, because The Way of Water will also start streaming on Disney Plus the same day it does on Max, the film may not be as big of a subscriptions driver as it likely would have been if it was exclusive. Avatar: The Way of Water hits Disney Plus and Max on June 7th

HBO Max’s 4K selection left a lot to be desired. Now that it’s putting an even higher premium on the sharper resolution, WBD says subscribers can expect much more this time around. When Max goes live on May 23rd, the new Warner Bros. Discovery streaming service will offer substantially more 4K entertainment than HBO Max ever did. The company issued a press release on Monday with new details on what subscribers on the $19.99 / month “Ultimate” plan can expect. Max will offer “8 times more films and episodes of 4K UHD content than HBO Max, including popular programming such as Game of Thrones, The Last of Us, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Dark Knight trilogy, the Matrix films and more,” the company announced. They’re really doing the thing. They’re taking 4K seriously. Finally. Max will support both Dolby Vision and HDR10 for content where those formats are available, and Dolby Atmos audio will also be included for select movies and shows. “We understand the value of offering our users a cinematic playback experience and to that end, we’ve implemented more advanced technology workflows that allow us to release more 4K content in a faster, more efficient way,” said Warner Bros. Discovery’s Sudheer Sirivara. “Max will offer more than 1,000 films and episodes in 4K at launch, and we’ll be adding more every month as we move forward.” Warner Bros. Discovery has chosen to only offer 4K (and HDR) on its most expensive monthly plan, a decision that isn’t sitting well with everyone. The Ultimate subscription costs more than HBO Max’s outgoing $15.99 / month ad-free plan. But the 4K catalog on HBO Max was severely underwhelming from the start. Recent high-profile Warner Bros. films often streamed in 4K HDR along with shows like The Last of Us. But considering the breadth of the service’s film vault, it was disappointing to see most of that selection capped at 1080p — especially when those same movies are available in 4K on many other digital services. The company seems aware that it needs to do better this time as it puts an even higher premium on 4K content. And sure enough, Max will include a large collection of past movies, including A Clockwork Orange, Casablanca, Goodfellas, and many more. Select past HBO series will also stream in 4K alongside recent hits like Succession. “Additionally, all Warner Bros. movies released this year and going forward will be available in 4K UHD when they arrive on Max following their theatrical windows,” the company said. WBD has promised that HBO Max subscribers will still have access to their current plan features for a minimum of six months following launch, so current customers don’t need to worry about that 4K upcharge just yet. Six months should make for a nice trial of sorts to see whether Max can make good on its 4K potential. Max will roll out on May 23rd in the United States across all the big platforms that you’d expect. Aside from the Ultimate tier, the service has two lower-priced subscription plans: Max Ultimate Ad Free | $19.99 / month or $199.99 / year: four concurrent streams, up to 4K UHD resolution, 100 offline downloads, Dolby Atmos sound quality Max Ad Free | $15.99 / month or $149.99 / year: two concurrent streams, 1080p resolution, 30 offline downloads, 5.1 surround sound quality Max Ad-Lite | $9.99 / month or $99.99 / year: two concurrent streams, 1080p resolution, no offline downloads, 5.1 surround sound quality We’ll have more Max coverage as the service begins rolling out on Tuesday, so stay tuned throughout the week for impressions and additional news. In the meantime, here’s the full list of 4K content that’ll be streaming as of tomorrow: 2001: A Space Odyssey 2nd Annual Ha Festival: The Art of Comedy 8-Bit Christmas A Christmas Mystery A Christmas Story Christmas A Clockwork Orange A Hollywood Christmas Ahir Shah: Dots Aida Rodriguez: Fighting Words Amy And Just Like That... The Documentary And Just Like That... Antlers Aquaman Argo Avenue 5 Bad Education Barbarian Barry (S2, S3) *S1 & S4 will be available on June 23. Batman (1989) Batman & Robin Batman and Harley Quinn Batman Begins Batman Forever Batman Returns Batman v Superman: Ultimate Edition Betty Big Little Lies Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) Black Adam Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart C.B. Strike Casablanca Catherine the Great Chernobyl Chris Redd: Why Am I Like This? Coastal Elites Colin Quinn & Friends: A Parking Lot Comedy Show Cry Macho DC League of Super-Pets Death on the Nile DMZ Don’t Worry Darling Dune East of Eden Edge of Tomorrow Elvis Empire of Light Euphoria Euphoria: Trouble Don’t Last Always Expecting Amy Fahrenheit 451 Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore Father of the Bride Free Guy Friends: The Reunion From the Earth to the Moon Game of Thrones Gaming Wall St Garcia! Giant Godzilla Godzilla vs. Kong Goodfellas Gossip Girl Ha Festival: The Art of Comedy Hacks Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return To Hogwarts Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2 Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince Harry Potter And The Order of The Phoenix Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults His Dark Materials Holiday Harmony House of the Dragon House Party I Hate Suzie In the Heights Industry Irma Vep It Chapter Two It’s a Sin Joker Judas and the Black Messiah Julia Justice League Kimi King Richard Kong: Skull Island Landscapers Lizzo: Live in Concert The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Version) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Version) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Version) Love, Lizzo Lovecraft Country Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty Magic Mike Malcolm X Malignant Man of Steel Mare of Easttown Marlon Wayans Presents: The Headliners Marlon Wayans: You Know What It Is The Matrix Reloaded The Matrix Resurrections The Matrix Revolutions Menudo: Forever Young Mortal Kombat Mosaic Moses Storm: Trash White My Brilliant Friend My Gift: A Christmas Special From Carrie Underwood Native Son No Sudden Move Ocean’s Eleven Oslo Our Flag Means Death Peacemaker Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman’s Butler Perry Mason Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin Rain Dogs Rap Sh!t Reminiscence Rio Bravo Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain Rose Matafeo: Horndog Santa Camp Scenes from a Marriage Scoob! See How They Run Selena + Chef Sex and the City Sharp Objects Shazam: Fury of the Gods Shazam! Singin’ in the Rain Sort Of Soul of America Space Jam: A New Legacy Starstruck Station Eleven Succession (S1-S3) *S4 will be available on June 30. Suicide Squad Superman: The Movie Sweet Life: Los Angeles Take Out with Lisa Ling That Damn Michael Che The Baby The Banshees of Inisherin The Batman The Big Brunch The Big Shot with Bethenny The Bob’s Burgers Movie The Bridge The Captive The Climb The Conjuring The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It The Dark Knight The Dark Knight Rises The Deuce The Fallout The Fastest Woman on Earth The Flight Attendant The Gilded Age The Girl Before The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug The King’s Man The Last of Us The LEGO Movie The Little Things The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The Many Saints of Newark The Matrix The Menu The New Pope The Night House The Nun The Plot Against America The Righteous Gemstones The Sex Lives of College Girls The Soul of America The Staircase The Suicide Squad The Survivor The Third Day The Tourist The Undoing The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin The Weeknd: Live at Sofi Stadium The White Lotus The Wizard of Oz Those Who Wish Me Dead Titans Tom & Jerry Wahl Street Watchmen We Are Who We Are We Own This City West Side Story (2021) White House Plumbers Winning Time: The Rise of The Lakers Dynasty Wonder Woman (2017) Wonder Woman 1984 Zack Snyder’s Justice League Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Justice Is Gray Max will stream over 1,000 movies and TV episodes in 4K at launch

Somehow Warner Bros. Discovery thinks it’s a good idea to relaunch its HBO Max streaming service as just “Max” in the middle of a Hollywood shakeup. The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter. Historically, the upfronts are a banner time for the television industry. Each spring, major networks present their wares to advertisers, hoping to sell airtime for top dollar. This year, though, the upfronts are happening amid a strike by the Writers Guild of America, and most of the events have happened with picket lines gathered outside. Netflix canceled their in-person event and held the presentation virtually. By the time Jon Steinlauf, head of US ad sales for Warner Bros. Discovery, took the stage two days ago for his company’s yearly stump speech, he was ready to address the elephant in the room: “What you’re about to see is not exactly the show we expected to do today. We made the decision to only have executives on stage out of respect for our talent and the WGA.” Like many of the other upfronts this week, WBD’s presentation kept the focus on non-scripted content: sporting events, news, docuseries. But unlike the other networks, WBD—the result of a merger between Warner Media and Discovery—was just days away from one of their biggest moves yet, something they were about to put more marketing dollars behind than anything else in the company’s history: the rebooting of HBO Max as just Max. It’s almost hard to remember now but HBO Max launched at the height of Covid-19 lockdowns, in May 2020. It felt like the best, and worst, time to launch a streaming service. Everyone was stuck at home and dying for new content to watch—but so were all the people who make TV shows and movies. The service had a great back catalog but couldn’t promise too much new content beyond what had been made prior to launch. On Tuesday, May 23, almost exactly three years later, it’s delivering a new service that combines what Max already has with that of Discovery+, but is also facing a writers strike that’s put a lot of productions on hold. “I am hopeful that a fair resolution is found soon with the writers that would, of course, return talent to this stage,” HBO and Max CEO Casey Bloys said during the upfront. “Until then, you’re kind of stuck with me and my clips.” In the grand scheme, a streaming service changing its name from a predictably milquetoast one to one even less descript isn’t very noteworthy. But now there’s yet another major bump in the rollout of Max, a road that’s already littered with potholes. And while it may seem like HBO is cursed to have terrible timing, there are things the company could do to avoid these roadblocks. For starters, it could push the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to make a deal with the WGA, whose members picketed outside the WBD upfront presentation at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, holding signs that read “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me, ‘It’s streaming,’” and chanting “When I say ‘AI’ you say ‘bye-bye.’” The company could also have not “fixed” something that wasn’t broken. Before the Discovery-Warner Bros. merger, HBO Max was on its way to becoming the best streaming service around. It had scores of incredible Warner Bros. movies, plus Game of Thrones, and despite the issues created by Covid-19, it was starting to release cool, critical-darling originals like Hacks. Its subscriber numbers were beating expectations. Then, post-merger, the newly-formed WBD began disappearing shows from HBO Max and declared the service would soon offer shows from Discovery, host to Shark Week and nearly every home-renovation show on the air. It appeared, to the dissatisfaction of many of its biggest fans, that the vibe at HBO Max was shifting. On May 23, that shift will be complete. At launch, the service will offer new original programming like Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, What Am I Eating? With Zooey Deschanel, and SmartLess: On the Road, which follows Will Arnett, Sean Hayes, and Jason Bateman as they take their podcast on tour. With the exception of perhaps Bama Rush, a documentary about the TikTok-famous sorority-recruiting practices at the University of Alabama, it’s all got a strong air of “OK, cool, I guess.” Moreover, the following Sunday, May 28, will feature the series finales of both Succession and Barry, two of the streamer’s most popular shows. Then, what Hollywood will be watching is who leaves with them. HBO Continues to Have the Worst Timing (May require free registration to view)

You’ll have to wait four days to watch the highlights from John Oliver’s weekly show. HBO has long posted the main segment from new episodes of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver to YouTube on Monday to coincide with the episodes’ premiere, but now you’ll have to wait. John Oliver posted yesterday that “HBO has decided they’re going to wait until Thursday to post them to YouTube from now on,” adding that he hopes HBO changes its mind. HBO confirmed the change to Variety yesterday, saying that when the show first premiered, “the convenience of watching on Max did not exist,” so it leaned on YouTube clips for exposure and promotion. The rep added that the company hopes “fans choose to watch the entire show on Max.” Other networks still post clips as soon as a show comes out — Comedy Central still puts up The Daily Show clips when an episode premieres, for example. But these days, sports are almost the only thing most people use linear TV for, so there’s not a big promotional benefit anymore. On top of that, HBO’s own streaming platform, Max, is in direct competition with YouTube. Giving it free views in a way that also pulls views away from its own platform ends up just depriving it of the revenue it gets from its own ad-supported tier. Source

Once a fan favorite, Max shed 700,000 subscribers in the past three months, even as it made money. That might work for Warner Bros. Discovery, but what about viewers? Max, the streaming service formerly known as HBO Max, has lost 700,000 subscribers in the past three months. Despite the huge drop, streaming revenue at Max, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, were up 5 percent—with a 30 percent year-on-year jump in advertising revenue. These numbers raise a big question for the streaming industry: People like Max, but they don’t really want to pay for it. Figuring out how much to charge for what service, and whether to offer ad-supported tiers, is the existential crisis of the current streaming wars. Nearly every service—Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+—has increased prices and/or added commercials to their services in the past few months. While many of them did it more recently, Max’s service seems like the least bang for the most buck. How so? Last January, Max increased its prices from $15 to $16 for its ad-free version. But then in May, when HBO Max became Max, the company announced its Ultimate Ad-Free tier, which costs $20 and includes 4K streaming. Not too bad, especially when you consider Netflix’s Premium tier is also now $20 per month. Max, though, recently emailed its legacy HBO Max customers letting them know that although they’d been allowed to have 4K at their previous $16-per-month price tag, that deal would be ending in December. Suddenly, Max doesn’t seem quite as worth it—especially when it’s ad-supported plan is only $10. According to Sarah Henschel, a principal analyst at Omdia who watches the streaming market closely, Max’s subscribers have been “relatively flat” for nearly a year, and the service also lost subscribers in the quarter previous to this one. Prior to Warner Bros. Discovery’s earnings report on Wednesday, Henschel said it “would be promising to see subscriber growth”—something that often happens at the end of the year when people sign up for services to watch during the holiday season—but ultimately, it’s the revenue that matters. “Investors right now are very keen on profitability,” she says. Warner Bros. Discovery, of course, isn’t the only company trying to figure out what price is right for subscribers to turn those profits. The pack of companies chasing down Netflix, like Disney+, did so at low price points in an attempt to attract subscribers. Their numbers went up, but they lost money. Now, as the streaming market gets more competitive, they’ve turned to ad-supported tiers and higher prices to make up the difference. Companies are also cracking down on password-sharing to make sure everyone pays up—a method that has, so far, been working for Netflix. Then there’s the matter of the content itself. Max has vast troves of content but has also shelved shows like Westworld to save money. Movies and TV series move around on streaming services all the time, but watching them come and go now feels different. The Hollywood actors strike, and the writers strike before it, slowed production on a lot of new films and shows this year—though, interestingly, not House of the Dragon—so the amount of new content coming may be a trickle for a while. Without a slate of flashy new shows and movies to lure subscribers in, it may be a while before Max’s user base really spikes. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav acknowledged the impact of the strikes on the company at the start of Wednesday’s earnings call, saying he was “hopeful” there would be a resolution soon. “As the strikes underscore, these are challenging times. Our industry is facing accelerated disruption in a rapidly changing marketplace. And to succeed long term, we must be flexible and adaptable and have a strong arsenal of assets that will enable us to maintain momentum amidst ever evolving consumer behavior.” That behavior includes deciding what amount of dollars, if any, to pay for a streaming service. Source

Now that Harley and Ivy are an item, let the eat, bang, kill tour commence Rather than marrying Kite Man (hell yeah) in the season 2 finale of HBO Max’s animated Harley Quinn series, Poison Ivy came to her senses, ditched her fiancé, and finally admitted to Harley that the romantic feelings between them were mutual. After driving off into the sunset with one another, Harley and Ivy are back in the first trailer for Harley Quinn’s upcoming third season and ready to share their love with the world. Though Harley (Kaley Cuoco) and Ivy (Lake Bell) were able to escape from Kite Man’s botched wedding unscathed, at least some of Gotham’s other villains who were in attendance were captured, like Clayface (Alan Tudyk) and King Shark (Ron Funches). The new trailer finds Harley and Ivy still basking in the glow of being newly out and deeply in love. While the pair would be perfectly fine keeping to themselves, Harley can’t help but kidnap and present her girlfriend with Amanda Waller as a two-week anniversary gift. It isn’t long before the new couple is back in Gotham robbing banks to finance their newest villainous endeavors and letting everyone know that their sex life is popping off. Harley and Ivy aren’t the only couple getting busy, and the trailer also implies that this season will feature more of Batman (Diedrich Bader) and Catwoman’s (Sanaa Lathan) relationship as well as the introduction of the Court of Owls. Harley Quinn’s third season hits HBO Max on July 28th. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are ready to get even freakier in season 3 trailer

Warner Bros. Discovery has begun the process of combining HBO Max with Discovery+. A unified streaming service that will offer content from both platforms will arrive next year. Apart from a premium ad-free subscription, the service will also offer an ad-lite tier. As reported earlier, HBO Max and Discovery+, two streaming services that are quite diverse in terms of content served, are coming under the same roof. The new service doesn’t have any official name yet, but is expected to arrive in the summer of 2023, announced Discovery chief David Zaslav during the second-quarter earnings call. The United States will be the first region to welcome the new streaming service, and 39 counties in Latin America will soon follow. European subscribers will be able to access the service in 2024, followed by the Asia-Pacific. The service could also enter a few as-yet-untapped new markets. JB Perrette, CEO, and President, Global Streaming and Games, hinted at why HBO Max is being merged with Discovery+: There’s lots to do, and we’re determined to get it right. We recognize that both of our existing products have shortcomings. HBO Max has a competitive feature set, but has had performance and customer issues. Discovery Plus has best-in-class performance and consumer ratings, but more limited features. Our combined service will focus on delivering the best of both. The combined streaming service is expected to assimilate nearly all the content from HBO Max and Discovery+. In other words, titles from Warner’s considerably huge portfolio, which includes HBO, CNN, DC Comics, Discovery Channel, Food Network, HGTV, Magnolia Network, OWN, TBS, and TNT, could be available through a single subscription. It is not clear if “Max Originals” will be a part of the package. However, a few days prior to the combined service’s launch, HBO Max and Discovery+ will start sharing select content. HBO and HBO Max had a total of 76.8 million global subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2022. Discovery+ is nowhere close, but collectively, the two services currently have 92 million subscribers. After merging the two streaming services, WarnerMedia Discovery hopes to reach 130 million global subscribers by 2025. Via: TV Line Unified HBO Max/Discovery+ streaming service to arrive next year with an ad-lite tier

And with it goes some of the good TV ItIt should not surprise you that HBO Max is about to be in a world of hurt. It is larger and more successful than its current sister streamer, Discovery Plus. But it’s also a part of Warner Bros. Discovery, a company now helmed by David Zaslav, and Zaslav is a man who loves him some reality TV and is okay gutting channels, canceling cool shows, and axing movies if it means the accounting books will look a little prettier. Now, just days after his company canceled Batgirl for a tax write-off, rumors are flying that HBO Max is going to be gutted, too. By most recent estimates, HBO Max, despite a terrifically bad app, had over 76.8 million global subscribers. Discovery Plus, the service launched by Zaslav pre-merger, had about 22 million. It’s firmly the third-largest streaming service by subscribers, behind Netflix and Disney Plus. HBO Max, again despite just a terrible app that needs a total overhaul, felt like proof that you didn’t need huge Marvel- and Star War-grade franchises or Netflix’s luxury of being an early mover in the streaming space to build a fairly robust streaming business. Jason Kilar, then-CEO of WarnerMedia, instead took a lot of things the company already had (the stellar HBO and its many successful properties; a huge catalog of WB films and TV shows; and a big fancy bag of successful intellectual property like DC Comics and Harry Potter) and formed HBO Max. To better differentiate HBO Max from Disney Plus and Netflix, Kilar also risked upsetting Hollywood by providing some particularly important incentives for customers stuck at home due to the pandemic. HBO Max had day and date releases for theatrical films. Zaslav was supposedly not a fan of Kilar’s strategy. Never mind his company was merging with Warner Bros. and coming in with a much less popular streaming service full of the stuff you watch when doing laundry or you’re stuck at your parents’ place for the weekend. Never mind the broader strategy of streamers is to produce “appointment TV” to compete with YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch. Zaslav is a reality TV guy. He built Discovery up into a reality TV empire and has long preferred the fast, cheap, and easy reality show to that more critically acclaimed but pricey scripted TV. Earlier this year, he hinted at the doom coming for the fledging HBO Max. “Our goal is to compete with the leading streaming services, not to win the spending war,” he said on a call in February. On the same call, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said the new company would seek “content efficiencies.” The Wrap and folks on Twitter claim that Warner Bros. Discovery may announce a major restructuring today during the company’s Q2 earnings call. The HBO Max side of the business will apparently face the brunt of it, with 70 percent of their development staff being laid off — according to an anonymous source The Wrap spoke to. The idea is that HBO will continue to be a marquee product for Warner Bros. Discovery but HBO Max, the streaming service that hosts the library of HBO and Warner Bros. and a surprisingly sturdy stable of original programming, will disappear, merging into a new app that will host all of the current content for both HBO Max and Discovery Plus (with the obvious exception of Batgirl). We’ve known the two apps would be combined since March, when Wiedenfels confirmed it at the Deutsche Bank 30th Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference. At the time, he called for “some very, very detailed and disciplined planning” to transition customers and merge to two services. If the rumors are true about today, either plans have changed or someone didn’t get the memo. Instead of a thoughtful rollout, the last few days have been chaos for the company. The cancellation of Batgirl has sent shockwaves throughout the entertainment world. The next day, HBO Max quietly pulled a number of HBO Max-exclusive films from the service and canceled others in production, further raising fears. (Fortunately, the pulled films are still available. Instead of being stuck in the vault with Batgirl, they’re now merely available on demand for sale or rent.) This morning, HBO Max announced Discovery darlings Chip and Joanna Gaines would be bringing select content from their Magnolia Network to the streaming service. “We can’t wait to bring these stories we love—including our next adventure, Fixer Upper: The Castle—to HBO Max this September,” said a statement from the couple in an HBO Max press release. Things are suddenly moving very fast at Warner Bros. Discovery, and the shiplap is on the wall. What that means for the many current HBO Max originals remains to be seen. Shows like Hacks, Harley Quinn, and Our Flag Means Death have earned big accolades and vocal fandoms. Other shows have died on the vine — the Ridley Scott sci-fi show Raised by Wolves was just canceled after two mediocre seasons. Later today, Zaslav could repeat what his company did at The CW and commence with a second “Red Wedding,” going on a canceling spree to further chip away at the $55 billion debt the company incurred in the merger. That debt is a sword hanging over the company’s head. And HBO Max, the pricey streamer trying to compete with Disney and Netflix, may be used as a shield to protect the still lucrative linear cable business at the heart of Warner Bros. Discovery. HBO Max might get maimed

Instead of going straight to streaming, it’s going nowhere About a week ago, industry observers noticed that Comic-Con 2022 came and went without any mention of Batgirl, the Warner Bros. film shot over the winter and apparently due for release in 2023. Today, the New York Post, The Wrap, and other entertainment outlets report that despite being in the final stages of post-production, Warner Bros. and DC Films have decided not to release the movie on any platform or in theaters. The list of American unreleased films on Wikipedia is not a long one, and the flicks on it usually have a reason for being there — see the 1994 Fantastic Four effort or Netflix’s shelved Bill Cosby 77 project. The Post says this film will join them due to new Warner Bros. Discovery executive David Zaslav and new Warner Bros. head Michael De Luca seeking to cut costs and focus on movies made for theaters instead of straight-to-streaming. Batgirl was directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (Bad Boys for Life) and stars Leslie Grace (In the Heights) in the title role. The Post quoted one source saying that after poor receptions from test audiences, Warner Bros. thought the movie “is going to be irredeemable.” Clearly, those test audiences never saw Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. DC Films president Walter Hamada laid out the previous strategy in early 2020, taking on Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe with two of its own: the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) and the DC Films multiverse. The idea was to release up to four movies in theaters every year, with another one or two slotted as HBO Max exclusives. Not long after that, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe and upended the planned release schedule. When HBO Max launched one of its biggest promised offerings was DC films, including a director’s cut of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Recently, Rolling Stone reported that the hype for “Snyder cut” was largely led by bots and inauthentic accounts. That might make a campaign to save Batgirl a little more tricky. HBO Max’s $90 million Batgirl movie is headed to the vault

The plan is to make a lot of money as cheaply as possible TheThe last few weeks, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has started to feel like a villain in a Real Housewives show. He isn’t here to make friends. He’s here to make money. Films have been canceled, TV shows have been yanked off HBO Max with zero preamble, execs have been let go, worsening the company’s already notable diversity problem, and the company has lost $20 billion off its market cap — all in an effort to get $3 billion in savings and hopefully reorient a ship Zaslav has disagreed with the course of. Zaslav’s plan is to focus on making as much money as cheaply as possible. When he joined Discovery in 2006, it was a small collection of education-oriented cable channels. Zaslav turned it into the reality TV monster we know today. He’s made his money catering to audiences that don’t pay for streaming but, instead, flip the channel on the TV — and when they don’t find something to watch, pack up and head to the movie theater. So while what we’re seeing could be the fumblings of an egoist with no grasp on the properties he’s purchased, what feels much more likely is that Zaslav just doesn’t care about the stuff a lot of us care about, such as “a big spread of readily available content that speaks to smaller groups often underrepresented in popular media all at a fairly affordable price.” Zaslav isn’t here to better enrich our entertainment landscape — he’s here to make money. That means he’s got to shift a company that’s spent two years focusing its energies elsewhere. In the years leading up to the Warner Bros. and Discovery merger, Warner Bros. underwent a pretty radical transformation. COVID altered the way people operated in 2020 (and in much of 2021 and even 2022), and Warner Bros. went all-in, deciding to focus on streaming at the cost of its other businesses. As a person with a very nice home theater setup and a love of quick and easy access to content, this was very appealing to me — and I bet it was to you, too. Instead of risking illness to see the biggest movies in theaters, we could sit at home and watch King Kong body Mothra over Mexico or Paul Atreides whisper-talk his way into legend in Dune. As people’s concerns over COVID waned (though it’s still very much a pandemic, and you should be testing regularly and masking up indoors!), HBO Max maintained a steady stream of content designed to compete not with traditional Warner Bros. rivals like Disney and Universal but with Netflix, whose movies go straight to the streamer and only make pit stops in theaters for awards eligibility. Theater owners, already devastated by COVID, were furious at the new Warner Bros. plan. They’re much happier now that Zaslav has reversed course, widening release windows and even moving some direct-to-streaming films into theaters. (Even if a marketing budget crunch means the next few years will see fewer Warner Bros. films hitting theaters... it’s the thought that counts.) And Zaslav’s appeal to theaters is mutually beneficial. Direct to streaming makes a lot of sense for Netflix, a company with a very small distribution arm. Warner Bros. Discovery has a whole apparatus built up to make lots of money off films in theaters. “Why,” I’m sure Zaslav says to himself, “should we throw away all that potential money just to boost the $15 a month subscriptions we sell for HBO Max?” Instead, the company can put the movies in theaters and then move them to the streaming service and double-dip on us, the consumers. I, personally, am not a fan of that! I don’t want to pay a billion times for the same content. But I’ve done it with books, software, movies, and TV for a while now. Zaslav knows there are plenty of rubes just like me probably willing to pay. We don’t know how the shocking cancellation of Batgirl plays into Zaslav’s grand plan to reverse streaming courses and turn Warner Bros. Discovery into a much more traditional entertainment behemoth. Reports on the film have ranged from “it’s so bad it should never see the light of day” to “it wasn’t bad and had a really great message.” It might have been canceled because it looked a little too CW to appear after the Warner Bros. Discovery logo on the big screen. Or it might have been canceled to help eke out a few extra tax break dollars as Zaslav & Co. work to make the $3 billion in savings promised by the merger. When I spoke to Francine McKenna, a lecturer in accounting at The Wharton School and author of the newsletter, The Dig, she noted the move to cancel Batgirl for tax reasons was weird. “There are tax benefits to writing down the assets now if you are the kind of company who likes losses because they offset current or future tax liabilities,” she said via email. “WB is a loser to begin with so not sure why incremental losses based on trash canning finished films is that helpful.” In its Q2 filings, Warner Bros. Discovery didn’t reference the cancellation specifically but did outline its overall plan in very accountant terms: Content impairments for the three and six months ended June 30, 2022 of $496 million and $501 million, respectively, and content development write-offs of $329 million for the three and six months ended June 30, 2022 were due to the abandonment of certain content categories in connection with the strategic realignment of content following the Merger and are reflected in restructuring and other charges in the Studios, Networks and DTC segments. All of the above is accountant speak for “WBD has a lot of content it doesn’t think makes sense for the new business and will get rid of it to write it off on the company’s taxes.” Batgirl wasn’t the only thing to apparently fall victim to the accounting department’s very sharp pen. In the past few weeks, the company has quietly removed dozens of shows and films from HBO Max — often without even warning their creators. One showrunner The Verge spoke to only learned of their show’s removal from Twitter. The reason for the culling seems to be that the content wasn’t hitting a big enough audience, and much of the content catered to an audience the new Warner Bros. Discovery just has no interest in: kids. Sources told CNBC that “Warner Bros. Discovery has decided to move away from the category with its future investment budget.” Earlier this week The Daily Beast reported that much of this culling, including the layoffs of the divisions overseeing HBO Max’s unscripted, kids and family, and international content, was in part to reorient the service and the company to better pursue Zaslav’s real money cow: Middle America. “If David Zaslav had his wish, he would just program Chip and Joanna all day long,” one unnamed executive told The Daily Beast. “There was just a massive, ‘We don’t need you. You’re not offering the things we’re focused on.’” And that’s what he’s doing to Warner Bros. Discovery. But Zaslav’s goal, to craft a company that can make money hand over fist by catering to the largest possible audience with a predictable (and cheap) slate of content, isn’t really what any of the rest of us want. The last few years, we’ve enjoyed a renaissance of TV. So much TV has been made so quickly and for so much money that there’s now a shortage of qualified showrunners. So much TV has been made as every company scrambles to populate their new streaming services with stuff to watch that a wide variety of people who have rarely — if ever — had the opportunity to see their lives represented on TV have gotten that opportunity. Ten years ago, lesbians frantically watched queerbaiting fare like Rizzoli & Isles for just the idea of two women being close enough kinds of friends that they might be romantic. Two weeks ago, Amazon Prime gave us A League of Their Own, a TV show featuring almost an entire cast of queer women and their stories. The glut of content has, by its nature, produced a diversity of content. But at Warner Bros. Discovery, Zaslav is turning off the content spigot and reorienting the company into something much more fiscally (and potentially culturally) conservative. The company’s stock has been on a downward spiral, but this could very well be a great thing for investors in Warner Bros. Discovery. It just won’t be as great for the rest of us. HBO Max and Warner Bros. Discovery seem to be on fire, and that’s on purpose

HBO Max has cut 36 titles from its catalog, according to a report from NPR. The company has pulled kid-friendly content from its streaming platform this week. It's the service's latest content removal in a series of recent cost-cutting moves. The content set to disappear includes HBO Max originals like the teen drama Generation, an unspecified selection of Sesame Street specials, and several animated shows, including Infinity Train. Citing the pending merger of HBO Max and Discovery+, which are both owned by parent conglomerate Warner Bros. HBO Max sent the following statement to NPR: "As we work toward bringing our content catalogs together under one platform, we will be making changes to the content offering available on both HBO Max and discovery+." Here is a list of the titles HBO Max says it will remove this week: 12 Dates of Christmas About Last Night Aquaman: King of Atlantis Close Enough Detention Adventure Dodo Ellen's Next Great Designer Elliott From Earth Esme & Roy The Fungies! Generation Hustle Genera+ion Infinity Train Little Ellen Mao Mao, Heroes of Pure Heart Messy Goes to Okido Mia's Magic Playground Mighty Magiswords My Dinner with Herve My Mom, Your Dad Odo OK K.O.! - Let's Be Heroes The Ollie & Moon Show Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures Ravi Patel's Pursuit of Happiness Select Sesame Street Specials Make It Big, Make It Small Share Squish Summer Camp Island The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo The Runaway Bunny - Special Theodosia Tig n' Seek Uncle Grandpa Victor and Valentino Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs The content purge is just the start of multiple changes with Warner Bros. HBO Max was hit the hardest during the merger between Warner and Discovery. Source: NPR HBO Max cuts 36 titles from its catalog

"Maybe it’s time you questioned the nature of your own reality." The fourth season of HBO's original series Westworld, returns on June 26. The teaser for the fourth season of Westworld that dropped last month was tonally evocative and visually stunning, but it told us very little about what to expect from the narrative. Now we have the full trailer, and it has made us eager to learn more, as it looks like the show is about to head into some very interesting places. (Spoilers for prior seasons below.) As we've reported previously, Westworld's third season was the first to take place largely outside the tightly controlled environment of the original theme parks. Opening three months after the events of the S2 finale, Dolores (Evan Rachel Woods) had re-created her host body. We learned she was targeting an AI system called Rehoboam, which was developed by a company called Incite. To access the system, Dolores had to take on its creator, Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel), and various other adversaries with their own motives for stopping her—including William, aka the Man in Black (Ed Harris), who vowed to destroy any remaining hosts. In the S3 finale, Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Dolores battled it out, and Dolores ended up in the hands of Serac. She was connected to Rehoboam but refused to give Serac any data about the hosts, so he deleted her memories. It was actually quite a moving scene, as in her last moments, Dolores made an emotional appeal to convince Maeve to turn on Serac. Rehoboam was deleted, William was seemingly killed by a host replica of himself, and Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) learned that the system was merely delaying the collapse of human civilization rather than preventing it. He entered the Sublime, hoping to figure out how to rebuild. The final shot was Bernard re-emerging into his body, covered in dust—so who knows how much time had passed? As the series has progressed, it has become harder and harder to keep track of the convoluted plot, multiple timelines, and characters—who's a host, who's human, who was human and is now being controlled by a host, which host is in which body, and so forth. The third season definitely unraveled a bit in the second half, although the finale was pretty powerful, giving us hope for the fourth season. A memory-wiped Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) awakens as a writer named Christina. Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) means to control the Man in Black (Ed Harris) Charlotte vs. Charlotte? Caleb (Aaron Paul) finds himself in the middle of a simulation. Attack of the faceless host! This new trailer provides more hope about the direction of the series. It opens with the host formerly known as Dolores waking up as a new persona, Christina, identified as a writer. Her voiceover informs us that this is the story of a girl who can see what nobody else can: "That there's something wrong with the world. And that it's her fault." Meanwhile, Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) has captured the Man in Black. "Your kind made a sport out of hunting us," she tells him as we see a small bug crawl into his eye. "You controlled our every move, and now I'm going to do the same to you. It's time to evolve into the species that we were meant to become." Bernard might have found a path toward realizing that evolution. But what if, as another voiceover contends, "We're not here to transcend. We're here to destroy." It seems that Maeve has re-created a Westworld prototype of some sort; a horrified Caleb (Aaron Paul) finds himself in the middle of it just as everything sets into motion. There is a montage of explosions, fight scenes, and an attack by a creepy, faceless android host, plus a brief shot of Teddy Flood (James Marsden) looking far more violent than his original programming intended. The final shot shows Caleb screaming as flies crawl over his face, presumably seeking an orifice through which to enter the body and assume control. Christina might want a story with a happy ending, but there are clearly forces at work intent on ensuring she doesn't get it. The fourth season of Westworld premieres on HBO Max on June 26, 2022. Listing image by YouTube/HBO Max It’s the hosts versus humanity in tantalizing Westworld S4 trailer

Save big before House of the Dragon premieres and the service changes New HBO Max owner Warner Bros. Discovery has been playing fast and loose with content recently on the streaming service as a result of fallout from the messy megamerger. Even though it’s been shedding shows and movies from the service to save money — and even canceling late-stage projects — it’s trying to course-correct any lost subscriptions by offering a new deal to bring in subscribers. New and returning subscribers can get 30 percent off a one-year subscription to HBO Max when signing up and prepaying the full year by October 30th. This knocks the ad-free plan down to $104.99 instead of $149.99 for the year (equivalent to $8.75 per month), and the ad-supported plan goes from $99.99 to $69.99 (equivalent to $5.83 per month). It may be an obvious attempt to lock people in for a full year, but it covers next week’s premiere and season run of the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon and more — at least, what’s not already been canceled. It’s hard to predict what the future service combining HBO Max and Discovery Plus will look like, but it’s hard to imagine that app can get much worse than HBO Max’s current one. In the meantime, if you’ve been interested in HBO Max anyway, you might as well save as much as you can on it. HBO Max is offering 30 percent off a one-year subscription for new and returning subscribers