Parent company discovery+ and HBO Max to merge US services in 2023 – Sound and Vision – News

Warner Bros. Discovery will replace its streaming platform HBO Max with a new platform, which will be a combination of that platform and discovery+. The combined streaming service should be available in the US in the summer of 2023. Other countries will follow after that.

According to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has given HBO Max a “competitive featureset,” which refers to the popular movies and series, as well as “performance and customer issues,” which refers to the high amount of buffering that viewers sometimes experience. Discovery+ would be much more reliable on the technical side, which is why the company wants to combine the forces of the two streaming platforms into a single new one.

The company has not yet announced what the new platform will be called and what it will cost, but a price increase is not inconceivable, because the offerings of the two platforms will be combined. The CEO assured listeners of the quarterly earnings review that the company has no plans to cancel series and movies left and right. The movie Batgirlwhich is almost finished, was recently canceled.

The company was very open about the intentions, but when the merger will take place is not yet known. For the time being, HBO Max and discovery+ cost 6 and 4 euros respectively per month in the Netherlands.

At the meeting, the company also reported revenue of $9.8 billion and a loss of $3.42 billion. The company is brand new: on April 8, it was formed from a merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, Inc. Warner Bros. Discovery plans to provide more information about its plans at an investor event before the end of this year.

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