Warner Bros. Discovery’s rebranding of the combined HBO Max and Discovery+ service launching this year is reportedly pushing forward with plans to drop the ‘HBO’ part of the name from the service.
According to Bloomberg and The Wrap, that decision has been informed by the company’s belief that “the HBO name turns off many potential subscribers”.
Whatever the official name change is, with ‘Max’ reportedly the leading contender at the moment, it is meant to signal that the combined service will not just be one of the original two services with the other’s content incorporated in.
The result will be different from Paramount Global’s approach combining Paramount+ and Showtime which simply involved stacking those names against each other and adding a ‘with’ in the middle.
The new name for the service will be officially unveiled on April 12th. The streamer is expected to continue to charge $15-$16 per month for the ad-free version, a cheaper, ad-supported tier for $10 a month, and as much as $20 a month for a new higher-priced tier with better video quality and other high-end features.
The streamer will also reportedly add thousands of unscripted reality titles from Discovery at no extra cost to HBO Max subscribers. Discovery+ will also continue as its own separate, lower-priced service.
