Warner Bros. Discovery will merge HBO Max and Discovery Plus into one larger streaming service, CEO David Zaslav confirmed in a second-quarter earnings call on Thursday via Variety. The media giant has not yet disclosed the name of the new platform, though it did set a launch date in the U.S. for next summer.
“One of the most important items here is that we believe in a combined product as opposed to a bundle… We believe that the breadth and depth of this content offering is going to be a phenomenal consumer value proposition,” Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said in a statement to the outlet. “The question is, in order to get to that point and do it in a way that’s actually a great user experience for our subscribers, that’s going to take some time. Again, that’s nothing that’s going to happen in weeks — hopefully not in years, but in several months — and we will start working on an interim solution in the meantime.”
Wiedenfels continued to explain that the merger is complementary, as HBO Max attracts a male-skewing demographic and Discovery Plus gears more towards women.
“The combination could not make more sense than what we’re doing here,” he said. “We have HBO Max, with a more premium, male-skewing positioning, and then you’ve got the female-positioning on the Discovery side. You’ve got the daily engagement that people enjoy with Discovery content versus sort of the event-driven nature of the HBO Max content. Take that together, I have no doubt that we will be creating one of the most complete, sort of four quadrant, old-young-male-female products out there.”
Currently, Discovery Plus costs $4.99 USD per month with ads or $6.99 USD without ads, and HBO Max asks for $9.99 USD with ads or $14.99 without ads. The company did not provide information on what the combined streaming service will cost.
Elsewhere in entertainment, Quentin Tarantino has shared a rare review of Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick.
Tagged: ENTERTAINMENT