Netflix Is The New Home For Multiple HBO Original Shows
According to The Hollywood Reporter, things have gotten dire enough for Warner Bros. Discovery to shake hands with a competitor: through a special licensing deal, rival streamer Netflix will receive much of Max’s once-exclusive HBO original content, including Insecure, Band of Brothers, Six Feet Under, and more.
If you strain your ears ever so faintly, you can practically hear the rustling of Warner Bros. Discovery executives trying to frantically keep their corporate ship from sinking. In order to cut costs wherever possible, the company has yanked large swathes of content from its popular Max streaming service, sometimes canceling completed projects before they can be streamed in order to get a tax write-off.
Depending on who you talk to, the deal with Netflix is either an unprecedented move or simply an extension of a decades-old practice. For example, while HBO has leveraged its exclusive content as a reason to subscribe for decades, they have licensed content out on previous occasions.
Shows previously exclusive to HBO such as Band of Brothers and Insecure will soon be available to stream on Netflix.
TBS received heavily-edited episodes of Sex and the City, for example, and HBO licensed popular shows like The Sopranos, Deadwood, and The Wire to Amazon. However, that happened before HBO had its own streaming platform.
Will This Deal Help Or Hurt Max?
While licensing Netflix content once exclusive to Max makes sense in the short term, it could actually hurt Warner Bros. Discovery in the long term.
In the short term, they’ll receive a much-needed injection of quick cash, and the company has enough original programming that they can just keep doing this with show after show.
However, every great show they license out makes their rival stronger, all while arguably devaluing a Max subscription because so much of the content that doesn’t get yanked for a tax write-off will now be available to those who don’t pay for Max.
On the other hand, despite its many errors (yes, we’re still salty about the password-sharing restrictions), Netflix remains the most popular streaming platform in the entire world, with nearly two and a half times as many subscribers as Max.
It’s always possible that licensing so much content to a popular rival will provide a tantalizing taste of HBO original content to customers that might go on to get their own Max subscription to see more.
If you strain your ears ever so faintly, you can practically hear the rustling of Warner Bros. Discovery executives trying to frantically keep their corporate ship from sinking.
Still, as much as Netflix getting a small mountain of Max content has us questioning the decisions Warner-Discovery CEO David Zaslav and his executives are making, we’re happy that this has resulted in a rare win for creators.
While many writers, directors, and showrunners have been understandably upset at Max suddenly removing their hard work (for good, in many cases), this licensing deal with Netflix means that showrunners like Insecure’s Prentice Penny get to share their creations with a bigger audience than ever before.
We’d love to see more of this, especially when the alternative is tossing so much content out in hopes that one more bucket of water will keep this ship from sinking.
