Warner Bros. Discovery on Wednesday unveiled its new flagship streaming service called Max — which will combine programming from HBO Max and Discovery+.
During its streaming event held on at Stage 14 on the Warner Bros. in Los Angeles, CEO David Zaslav said the company’s new bundled service will launch on May 23 and cost between $9.99 and $19.99 a month.
“This is our time, this is our chance, everything is possible,” Zaslav said, explaining that streaming is central to the company’s success.
The move means that HBO Max subscribers will be migrated to Max, while Discovery+ subscribers will not be asked to migrate, the company said.
“Max is the one to watch,” the CEO said, unveiling Max’s tagline, which he repeated several times before introducing JB Perrette, the president and CEO of streaming and games for the company.
“This new brand signals an important change from two narrower products, HBO Max and Discovery+, to our broader content offering and consumer proposition,” Perrette said moments later, of Max.
He noted that HBO’s premium shows like “Game of Thrones,” “Succession” and “Sex and the City,” would be prominently featured on Max.
The Max launch comes a year after WarnerMedia and Discovery completed its $43 billion merger, which brought properties like HBO, CNN, TNT, TLC, The Food Network and HGTV under one umbrella.
Despite recent criticism from Hollywood over combining the company’s popular streamers, HBO Max with Discovery+, to create a Franken-service, Zaslav underscored on Wednesday that the move would provide a “broad array” of content, allowing it to compete with heavy hitters like Netflix and Disney+.
“Holding subscribers is as important as adding subscribers,” Zaslav said. “Every member of the household can watch something here.”
Warner Bros. Discovery currently has 96.1 million streaming subscribers across HBO, HBO Max and Discovery+. The company has not broken out its subscriber numbers by service. Meanwhile, Netflix has over 230 million subscribers, while Disney+ has more than 162 million subscribers.
The new service, which will house critically-acclaimed series like HBO’s “White Lotus” alongside TLC’s trashy hit reality show franchise,”90 Day Fiance,” will cost $9.99 a month for two concurrent account sign-ins and no downloads and advertising. Users can pay $15.99 for no ads, two sign-ins and 30 downloads, or $19.99 for four sign-ins and 100 offline dowloads and beefed up sound quality and 4K resolution.
“We are on a mission.” Zaslav said closing out the presentation. “We are a mission to be the one to watch.”
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
