The Best Streaming Service Is About To Change Its Name, Price, and Content
Warner Bros. Discovery is changing HBO Max to just Max and adding thousands of titles from Discovery+.
HBO Max, one of the biggest streaming services in the world, is about to transform entirely as we know it. In another change that has come out of the Warner Bros. and Discovery merger, the production conglomerate is changing its streaming service, but unlike the other changes the company has made over the last year (including the many, many cancelations it’s called for), this sounds like it might be a good thing. According to Bloomberg, HBO Max is dropping its prefix and becoming just “Max,” as well as introducing thousands of new content titles into its streaming catalog.
Technically, Warner Bros. Discovery has not yet announced its planned changes for HBO Max. The official announcement will come via a press conference next month, but Bloomberg has reported on Warner Bros. Discovery’s behalf what at least some of the changes to the streaming platform will be. According to the report, the streaming platform will maintain the same pricing structure that it previously followed, meaning that the ad-supported tier would remain $10 per month, while it would cost $16 per month for no ads and $20 per month for a higher video quality subscription with a few extra features.
Since this news doesn’t come from the official announcement, things could always change before Warner Bros. Discovery reveals the new service and officially changes HBO Max to just plain old Max.
It’s pretty good news to hear that the pricing structure will stay the same for the new platform, especially when many corporate companies are known for squeezing every drop that they can from their customers’ pockets. That’s something that Warner Bros. Discovery’s direct competition, Disney, was trying to do with their theme parks over the last couple of years, and now the previous-CEO-turned-reinstated-CEO, Bob Iger, is doing damage control to try and backtrack away from the company’s greedy policies.
In addition to the (albeit slight) name change, thousands of titles will be added to the new HBO Max library. All of them will come from Discovery’s unscripted lifestyle shows, which many fans will have already seen on Discovery’s own streaming platform: Discovery+. However, despite adding all of Discovery+’s titles to Max, Discovery+ will continue to run and operate independently from the Warner Bros. streaming platform.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during the company’s last quarterly call that he was excited about the changes that they’re making to HBO Max. He claims that the company is taking all of Warner Bros. and Discovery content and folding it into an even better streaming platform. According to Zaslav, updating HBO Max aims for the company to have the “best menu of content, the best portfolio, the best quality.”
Right now, Warner Bros. Discovery is looking at the long-term benefits of updating HBO Max. Zaslav claims that Warner Bros. Discovery already has the largest movie library of any other competitor. He aims to use that library and the updated Max platform to make Warner Bros. Discovery the most successful production company for years to come.
