Soon, after watching the latest episode of HBO's new zombie-apocalypse hit, The Last of Us, you'll now be able to stay in the same app, becoming a zombie yourself as you binge on 90 Day Fiancé and thousands of hours of other Discovery reality shows.
Yeah, Warner Bros. Discovery's upcoming rollup of Discovery programming into HBO Max has sounded like a weird, incongruous match from the start to us, but at least HBO Max users won't be paying more for the newly configured service, which will likely be rechristened "Max" when it debuts later this year.
According to Bloomberg, Max's ad-supported version will run around $10 a month, while the ad-free iteration will be priced at $15 - $16 a month, both of which match current pricing.
WBD, which will keep marketing the $4.99-a-month Discovery Plus as a standalone service, is set to present details to the press about the combined flagship streaming platform in April.
The conglomerate reported having 96.1 million direct-to-consumer customers at the end of 2022, with streaming subscriber growth decelerating markedly, along with DTC losses that were trimmed to nearly a third, year over year, at $217 million.
Remarking on the cuts Wednesday at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said, “We got a lot of criticism, especially in the press at the time. At this point, I think a lot of our peers and others in the industry have kind of made similar decisions. So we haven’t abandoned anything that made sense, and we’re very committed to continuing to invest.”
