As an eventful week for Warner Bros. Discovery draws to a close, the media company has made another huge announcement: beginning Summer 2023, HBO Max and Discovery+ will relaunch as single streaming platform.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and president of global streaming and interactive, JB Perrette,shared the news along with a timeline for the mergerduring the company’s Q2 earnings call Thursday, per Variety.
The announcement comes after news broke earlier this week that the company would bepulling two nearly-complete films—DC’sBatgirland the animatedScoob! Holiday Haunt—and had also been quietly scrubbing its exclusive content from HBO Max.
Related:HBO Max Quietly Removes Six Streaming-Exclusive Films From Warner Bros.
The new streaming service will first launch in the summer of 2023 in the United States; the roadmap shared by Perrette has Latin America following closely behind in fall 2023, with Europe, Asia Pacific, and additional markets rolling out throughout 2024.
Though there’s no word yet on a name for the new platform, Perrette promised that the merged HBO Max-Discovery+ will combine “the best elements of both services,” highlighting Discovery+’s robust underlying delivery capability andHBO Max’s rich set of features.
“Something For Everyone in the Household” HBO Max-Discovery+ Merger a Move to Cut the Churn
The move to merge the two platforms is no surprise—the corporation previously announced its intent to combine the streaming services. CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels gave a broad sketch of a strategy to combine the two back in March, originally intending to sell the pair as a bundle. Speaking with analysts Thursday, Perrette said that the merger was “the only way we saw to make this a viable business.”
The fused HBO Max-Discovery+ platform plans to cut the churn by offering “something for everyone in the household.” Through unifying the thousands of hours of scripted, reality, and documentary content across the two streamers, Warner Bros. Discovery is hoping to target the 33% of U.S. consumers who admitted to subscription-hopping between services in the same report.
Though Perrette did not discuss pricing for the merged platform, the exec did indicate that the company was “exploring how to reach customers in a free, ad-supported space” with content separate from premium VOD offerings.
