Confirms what was already known: HBO Max and Discovery+ will merge into a single service. The transition will begin next year in the United States and the following year it will be extended to Europe and the rest of the markets, so until then nothing will change and both will continue to function as before.
The waters are in turmoil within Discovery, the new owner of WarnerMedia and all its tentacles, including Warner Bros, TNT, Cartoon Network, DC Comics, CNN and HBO Max, one of today’s great video-on-demand platforms, and it is that with the new owners already exercising as such, the restructuring has begun.
This means, to begin with, a significant cost cut, even at the cost of losing many millions already invested along the way. The example that is giving a lot to talk about these days is the cancellation of the new Batgirl movie, already in pre-production, in which between 70 and 100 million dollars had been polished and that will not see the light even on HBO Max.
The reason? Broadly speaking and for more hot cloths that have been tried to put, the brief official statements that have been made point to garbage content, one that unlike what usually comes from HBO, seems to be left over in one of the company’s greatest assets, as is DC superhero stuff. In this sense, the intention from now on is to make only big blockbusters quality and not stuffed.
To what extent the new course will affect what Warner Bros. takes out of DC is not known, but productions like Flash, Black Adam or the sequel to The Joker for cinema, they are not in danger at the moment. Neither is the continuity of the suicide squad or series like The peacemaker and others, and even the return of Henry Cavill in the role of Superman is rumored, but nothing is confirmed.
What has been confirmed is that the “experiments” have come to an end and DC will imitate Marvel, drawing up a 10-year plan to get the most out of the house’s superhero franchises, but without prejudice to the quality of the final product. As they tell it, it is not about doing more, but about doing it better.
In any case, Discovery isn’t just cutting content from Warner Bros. Cancellations have occurred to a greater and lesser extent since the new directive took control, back in the spring of this year, and there is no better example of this than the merciless curtailment of CNN+. It has also been noted with the European production of HBO, all canceled except for a few titles, including a new season of the Spanish 30 coins.
However, there are many more changes that have taken place, for example with the removal of content from HBO Max… and those that are expected to happen, and that is that the new bosses of the conglomerate do not seem to shake their pulse to charge everything that doesn’t work. A litmus test will be given at the end of this month, when the prequel to Game of Thrones, the house of the dragon.
Returning with the news, although everything commented derives from the new situation, many data remain to be known. Without going any further, what will be the new house that brings together the offer of HBO Max and Discovery +, because it is understood that it will not be any of the existing ones. Something that has been advanced is that Free plans with ads will be extended to Europein the style of what was proposed by Netflix.
In the meantime, everything will remain more or less the same for HBO Max subscribers. If anything, the number of launches will be reduced a little, but not by much, because one of the priorities of Discovery is not to lose users.
