Paramount Skydance plans to combine Paramount+ and HBO Max into one streaming service, upon the completion of the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. However, Paramount will want HBO as a brand to “operate with independence.”
“As we said, we do plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct to consumer subscribers,” Paramount CEO David Ellison said during an investor call breaking down the details of the planned merger Monday. “We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space At Paramount, by the middle of this year, we’ll have completed the consolidation of our three services under one unified stack, and you can see us taking a similar approach to this platform going forward. And we think the combined offering, and given the amount of content and what we can do from the tech side, really will put us in a position to be able to compete with the most scaled players in DTC.”
However, Ellison says Paramount leadership wants to give HBO, currently run by Casey Bloys, the special treatment to continue developing and programming content without heavy oversight from Paramount’s execs.
“Casey and his team do absolutely an remarkable job at HBO,” Ellison, who told analysts on the call “Game of Thrones” is his favorite HBO series, said. “And as we said, we do plan for that to be able to operate with independence, so that HBO can, candidly do what it does incredibly well. Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO. They built a phenomenal brand. They are a leader in the space, and we just want them to continue doing more of it. But by bringing the platforms together, all of our content will be able to reach even a broader audience than we can do standalone.”
