WBD Rebrands HBO Max as ‘Max’ With Harry Potter and Game of Thrones Series Coming

Max is coming to market.

Following months of streaming rumors and speculation, Warner Bros. Discovery is officially combining its streaming services HBO Max and Discovery+ under one brand: Max.

Launching May 23 with a new tagline, color and mission, the upcoming service will drop the iconic HBO moniker in favor of the single word.

“HBO has not and is not changing course at all,” Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max content (boasting a new title), assured viewers during Wednesday’s press announcement. After showing trailers for three upcoming series, Bloys remarked, “As you can see, HBO will remain HBO.”

The $43 billion merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery closed last year, and David Zaslav, CEO of the combined company, described 2022 as a “year of coming together, a year of restructuring,” before adding, “Off we go, all together, to build Warner Bros. Discovery into the next century.”

The company is hopeful that by dropping the HBO name, a new brand will encapsulate the full breadth of content the combined service will offer, pointing specifically to kids and family viewership like the Looney Tunes brand.

A new model

Max comes on the heels of a more than $200 million fourth-quarter loss in the streaming segment alone for Warner Bros. Discovery, which reported 96.1 million total direct-to-consumer subscribers at the end of 2022.

With the new tagline, “The one to watch,” and ditching the former purple color palette for a Facebook-like blue, Max wants to stand out in a “sea of streaming services,” according to JB Perrette, president and CEO of global streaming and games at WBD.

“We needed to do the basics much better,” said Perrette. “In this era of peak confusion, we’re trying to simplify and improve the experience for consumers, focusing on quality, not just quantity.”

“HBO is not TV. HBO is HBO,” Perrette added. “It needs to stay that way, which is why we will privilege it in the product experience and not push it to the breaking point by forcing it to take on the full breadth of this new content proposition.”

The company will focus on four areas of improvement, working to drive more engagement, enhance retention, strengthen performance and optimize monetization.

According to Perrette, three-quarters of HBO Max’s viewership comes from the home screen only, whereas on Discovery+, the majority of engagement comes from areas deeper in the app. As a result, the company will use Discovery+’s learnings to drive further engagement on Max, including a new navigation menu at the top.

That also involves genre hubs and a new shortcut to save content to watch later. In addition, user profiles will have “highly differentiated” experiences, heavily leaning on machine learning. And for the first time, watch-next recommendations will appear and a default kids profile with parental controls will automatically launch.

To reduce involuntary churn, Max will have fail-payment notifications through on and off-product messages, including in-app messages on connected TVs for the first time.

Connected TV sign-in processes have been simplified with two new features, and app start times and video start times are expected to be 20 to 30 times faster. Marketing teams can now make pricing or promotional teams within a day, a process that would have taken weeks previously.

The ad-lite offering will launch with a “full suite” of ad products built on the company’s own tech stack, which Perrette promised marketers would hear more about during the upfront.

Most users will automatically be updated to the Max app when the product launches on May 23. Usernames and passwords will carry over automatically, along with profiles, watch histories and billing.

Solo Discovery+ subscribers will be unaffected by the changes to Max. Perrette said the company would offer “various opportunities” to try out the streamer, but Warner Bros. Discovery doesn’t want to leave any paying subscribers behind.

More product, same price

The ad-lite and ad-free tiers will remain the same price, at $9.99 and $15.99 per month, respectively. But on May 23, a new offering, Max Ultimate Ad Free, will be made available for $19.99 per month. This includes four concurrent streams, 4K UHD resolution and up to 100 offline downloads.

Leading up to launch, the service is debuting its “biggest marketing campaign ever,” according to Perrette. It will run across all types of media, ramping up as it gets closer to the May unveiling.

The company ended the launch announcement with news sure to excite Game of Thrones fans as the second season of prequel series House of the Dragon enters into production. According to Bloys, another prequel, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, set 100 years before Game of Thrones, has been ordered straight to series.

And Potterheads, a multi-season order of a Harry Potter series featuring a new cast will take place over the next decade. All seven books, faithful to the original book series, will be adapted in a new production from executive producer JK Rowling.

Among the other highlights, look out for a new Big Bang Theory spinoff, more Rick and Morty, further exploration into the DC Universe, a Max Original drama series based on The Conjuring franchise and a 90 Day Fiancé affiliate from TLC titled Love & Translation.