HBO Max

• 1. An Unexpected Test

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  HBO Max arrived in the United States on the 27th of May 2020, and its first major test of judgment came within days. On the 9th of June 2020, amid protests following the death of George Floyd, the service removed Gone with the Wind from its library. The decision followed an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by John Ridley, the screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave. Sixteen days later, the film returned. Turner Classic Movies host Jacqueline Stewart provided a new introduction, addressing the film's treatment of slavery, the Reconstruction era, and the American Civil War.

  WarnerMedia had first announced plans for the service on the 10th of October 2018. The vision called for a platform drawing on the libraries of HBO, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Cartoon Network, and dozens of other brands. It was designed to carry everything from prestige dramas to children's cartoons. Whether a service named for prestige television could succeed by offering something far broader was a question the company would spend years trying to answer.

• 2. Building the Library

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  On the 17th of September 2019, HBO Max locked in the streaming rights to The Big Bang Theory. That deal also extended TBS's off-network rights to the series through 2028. It was one of several major acquisitions completed before the service launched, part of a strategy built around recognizable library titles. The service debuted with over 700 episodes of BBC content, including the first eleven seasons of the 2005 Doctor Who revival. HBO extended its existing partnership with Sesame Workshop. Select episodes from all fifty seasons of Sesame Street, some dating back to 1969, became available on the service for the first time in the show's history.

  South Park arrived via a deal valued at $500 million, giving HBO Max exclusive domestic streaming rights to the show and its next three seasons. First-run episodes would appear on the service twenty-four hours after their premiere on Comedy Central. Kevin Reilly, the service's chief content officer, declined to follow Netflix's practice of releasing entire seasons at once. He said that weekly releases let shows "breathe," rather than "fading quickly after a binge and burn." He pointed to Succession and Chernobyl, both co-produced with Sky UK, as examples of series that built lasting audiences through the weekly model. A slate of 31 original series was planned for the first year. On the 5th of February 2020, Warner Bros. announced the Warner Max film label, which would produce eight to ten mid-budget films per year for the service.

• 3. Project Popcorn

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  On the 22nd of October 2020, The Witches was released exclusively on HBO Max in the United States, bypassing theaters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Two months later, Wonder Woman 1984 debuted simultaneously in North American theaters and on the service on the 25th of December. On the 3rd of December 2020, WarnerMedia announced that its entire 2021 film lineup would follow the same model. The Little Things would go first, on the 29th of January.

  Seventeen films were released under the arrangement. Warner Bros. called the plan "Project Popcorn" internally. The list included Godzilla vs. Kong, Mortal Kombat, Dune, The Suicide Squad, and The Matrix Resurrections. Measurement data from Samba TV showed Mortal Kombat drawing 3.8 million households in its initial streaming period. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It drew 1.6 million, and In the Heights drew 693,000. WarnerMedia declined to publish its own viewership figures.

  Warner Bros. spent more than $200 million compensating talent whose agreements had been structured around theatrical revenue. Filmmakers, production companies, the Directors Guild of America, and the Creative Artists Agency all objected, having learned of the plan only through the public announcement. The studio said in March 2021 that same-day streaming releases would end in 2022, replaced by a 45-day exclusive theatrical window. The Matrix Resurrections, released on the 22nd of December 2021, was the last film issued under Project Popcorn.

• 4. The 2022 Cuts

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  David Zaslav took over as CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery in April 2022, following the merger of WarnerMedia with Discovery, Inc. Within months, he had overseen a sweeping series of reductions to the platform. In July 2022, the service stopped new original series development in Central Europe, Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and Turkey. That same month, the cancellation of Gordita Chronicles signaled a broader retreat from live-action children's and family programming.

  In August 2022, the films Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt were both cancelled despite being nearly complete. On the 3rd of August, multiple Max Original films and HBO series were removed from the platform without prior notice. WBD wrote off the value of those titles; avoiding payment of residuals was reported to be part of the calculation. Later that month, the cuts expanded further. The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo was among the series pulled from the service. Final Space, Summer Camp Island, Infinity Train, and Close Enough also disappeared. Nearly all content from Cartoon Network and Adult Swim was taken down, along with the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. Close to 200 episodes of Sesame Street were removed. The pulldowns drew heavy backlash from fans, critics, actors, and creators.

  On the 24th of August 2022, the film House Party was pulled from the streaming calendar just 17 days before its planned premiere. Evil Dead Rise was redirected to theaters the same day. Zaslav said during an earnings call that the company would cut children's programming and prioritize theatrical releases over streaming films. Warner Bros. Discovery later licensed more than 2,000 hours of the removed programming to The Roku Channel and Tubi.

• 5. Becoming Max

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  On the 12th of April 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery officially unveiled Max, the renamed service that would launch in the United States on the 23rd of May. JB Perrette, WBD's head of global streaming, offered the rationale: the HBO name carried associations with premium adult programming that sat uneasily alongside children's shows and reality series. Dropping "HBO" from the title allowed the brand to represent the full library. To own the name outright, WBD first had to purchase the domain. Max.com was acquired from Max International, a nutritional supplement company, for $1.8 million.

  The logo was designed by the British agency DixonBaxi. The firm drew on elements from both the HBO and Warner Bros. visual identities. The center-dotted "a" in the Max wordmark echoed the center-dotted "O" from the HBO logo, while the letterforms of "m" and "x" incorporated curves from Warner Bros.' long-running shield logo. The service's corporate color shifted from purple to blue. Warner Bros. Discovery described the change as an homage to Warner Bros.' historical use of blue-colored logos. The blue also signaled that the service aimed to be "premium but accessible." The campaign carried the tagline "The one to watch." Pato Spagnoletto, chief marketing officer of Warner Bros. Discovery Streaming, called it the largest marketing spend in company history. WBD's stock fell by nearly six percent on the day of the announcement.

  Within the first three months of the rebrand, WBD lost 1.8 million subscribers across its streaming platforms. By November 2023, the company reported losing 2.5 million subscribers over a six-month period, with its shares falling 19 percent. In May 2024, WBD announced a partnership with Disney Streaming to bundle Max with Disney+ and Hulu in the United States. The bundle launched on the 25th of July 2024, priced at $16.99 a month with ads and $29.99 without.

• 6. The Ownership Question

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  On the 14th of May 2025, during its upfronts presentation, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that the service would return to its original name: HBO Max. The rollout began on the 9th of July 2025. Variety reported that WBD executives had timed it to land before the nominations for the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards were announced. Casey Bloys, CEO of HBO and Max Content, said the brand "clearly states our implicit promise" to deliver programming recognized as unique. In a phrase he said HBO had long used internally, its value came down to being "worth paying for." Zaslav cited subscriber growth built around programming quality as the reason for restoring the name.

  On the 5th of December 2025, Netflix announced it would acquire Warner Bros. Discovery for $72 billion, and the service's future became suddenly uncertain. The deal as described would bring HBO Max alongside the HBO network, the Warner Bros. studios, and DC Entertainment under Netflix. Discovery+, CNN, and the company's linear television networks would be spun off into a separate entity called Discovery Global. Three days after Netflix's announcement, Paramount Skydance entered a competing bid, placing an enterprise value of $108.4 billion on all of WBD.

  After receiving a contractual waiver from Netflix in February 2026, WBD reopened talks with Paramount Skydance. On the 26th of February 2026, WBD's board determined that Paramount Skydance's revised offer of $110.9 billion was a superior proposal. Netflix declined to match it and withdrew. WBD's shareholders approved the sale to Paramount Skydance on the 23rd of April 2026. If the deal clears regulatory review and closes, Paramount Skydance plans to merge its streaming service Paramount+ with HBO Max into a single combined platform. The service completed its European rollout on the 26th of March 2026, when it launched in the United Kingdom and Ireland. A programming agreement with Sky Group had delayed that arrival for years after the service's American debut.