There has been confusion about what the difference between HBO Now, HBO Go and HBO Max is, but now there should be a little more clarity about how to access some of the services thanks to a statement from a WarnerMedia chairman.
Robert Greenblatt is a chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment, overseeing HBO, TBS, TNT and upcoming streaming service HBO Max. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, he said that, while HBO and HBO Max are separate, ‘That’s the old way of thinking about it. They’re ultimately going to live together, bundled next to each other in the same app. So, yes, they’re separate departments, but they’ll coalesce into one unified experience.’
He described HBO as the ‘signature of the platform’, saying that ‘nothing is more important than keeping it intact’. This is because they have a clear audience which is ‘slightly older’ and ‘40-plus’, so ‘we know what kinds of programming they do’. However, he also acknowledged that ‘there’s a lot they don’t do’, which is why HBO Max has been developed.
Greenblatt has described the new streaming platform as covering the rest of the age brackets and genres. In other words, ‘Kids all the way up to young adults. And different genres, like YA or unscripted, which HBO largely doesn’t do.’
There will also be a clear strategy when it comes to acquiring films. ‘We have Warner Bros. and New Line, and they want to make middle-range movies that don’t work at the box office anymore. We’re just figuring out how many we need, should we consider a theatrical release, how do we window. We’ve bought five or six so far for this first year.’
How about whether episodes are dropped all in one go, like many on Netflix have been in the past, or on a weekly basis, as seen with shows like The Mandalorian on Disney Plus? ‘We mirror exactly what’s on HBO, and we didn’t want to suddenly remake HBO linear and say we’re going to drop a whole series on day one.’
‘But we’re probably going to play around a bit, here and there. We may drop all episodes of a reality show, if there are six or eight, at once. But by and large, it’ll be episodic, probably with a two or three-episode dump at the beginning.’
