re: HBO Max is about to get nuked and folded into Discovery Plus

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Can we please get rid of Zasalv and bring back Kilar?

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Yeah, Kilar was real great, like when he released everything on HBOMax and pissed off all of WBs stable of talent. Great move.
You guys realize Zaslav is actually looking at real financial numbers?

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List of MAX originals that I watch:

Titans
Doom Patrol
Peacemaker
That Damn Michael Che
Our Flag Means Death

These are all currently listed as Max originals, though some started off as HBO.

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Titans and Doom Patrol started out on DC Universe.

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This is why Warner Bros sucks arse.

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Because they got bought out by another company?

They’re definitely just cutting shows fairly arbitrarily

I mean none of them are beloved hits, but they’ve cut shows from 2003, 2014, 2016, etc before Max even existed so it isn’t just Max titles that are being removed

So the idea that the app would be HBO’s backlog accessible at all times is clearly over. Which sucks.

Here are the shows that have been removed. I suspect the number will be longer but this is the second batch after those 6 movies and 3 unreleased ones yesterday.

Vinyl
Mrs Fletcher
Camping
K street
Run
Here and Now

Those shows were made for hbo, but they were made in partnership with production houses. As long as those titles are streaming, the parent company has to pay some amount of royalties to the production houses. Paramount Television and Jagged Productions are people Discovery doesn't want to pay any more, in the case of Vinyl.

This is really stupid. Hopefully these shows will go into some kind of rotation in the future. Show up as limited time streams so people can watch.

I thought Mrs. Fletcher was getting a another season. Guess not.

Is there a good site for listing co-production companies? I looked up Mrs Fletcher on Wikipedia and didn’t see it.

As for the strategy, it seems a lot like when ESPN was cutting 100 employees to show investors they were tightening their budgets. It was performative as hell.

Cut a Tennessee Titans beat writer making 100K a year, a Penn State beat writer and a hockey guy making a combined 225K, and then give Gruden a 25 percent raise so he is making 5 million.

The write downs on the original 6 films plus the 3 scrapped projects probably do save some more significant money but is it worth scaring away talent who will be worried that their shows or movies could be thrown away with no one ever watching their work?

Most of those 9 films sounded bad, had poor reviews, were remakes of older movies, and/or had few viewers. But the issue is with the vetting.

Once you’ve made something, shelving it forever is going to aggrevate people looking forward to it, the actors who signed on, the directors/writers/producers, etc.

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Is there a good site for listing co-production companies? I looked up Mrs Fletcher on Wikipedia and didn’t see it.

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Sorry, I don't know.

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The write downs on the original 6 films plus the 3 scrapped projects probably do save some more significant money but is it worth scaring away talent who will be worried that their shows or movies could be thrown away with no one ever watching their work?

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I would think not. I'm sure some insane hours went into the accounting calculations here, but this whole debacle is going to leave a big stink.

On the other hand, you have dudes in the other thread saying this ceo "gets it" based on how he's canceling so much already completed content and alienating so much talent. So, who knows.

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Yeah, Kilar was real great, like when he released everything on HBOMax and pissed off all of WBs stable of talent. Great move. You guys realize Zaslav is actually looking at real financial numbers?

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Releasing stuff on streaming was awesome.. “only in theaters” is a pain in the arse.

Wasn't the same day streaming release just a covid thing? I never thought that was intended to be permanent for the big movies.

I find it silly to remove content to get out of paying royalties. It should be on a per view basis, It is way cheaper to have existing shows than to make new ones...

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Those shows were made for hbo, but they were made in partnership with production houses. As long as those titles are streaming, the parent company has to pay some amount of royalties to the production houses. Paramount Television and Jagged Productions are people Discovery doesn't want to pay any more, in the case of Vinyl.

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I’ve also read that because of the way production costs are amortized, the new Warner Bros. Discovery may be able to write off remaining unamortized production costs by completely cutting shows from their lineup. It certainly seems like that’s the plan with Batgirl, but could also apply to some of the recent shows that have already been released.

For example, they might delete Raised by Wolves from their catalog entirely if they think the write down on the remaining unamortized cost is worth more than keeping it… even if it doesn’t actually cost them anything to keep it on the platform.

Take it with a grain of salt.. I’m not an accountant and I don’t know how much truth there is to that scenario. But it certainly would not surprise me if something like that were in play.

It’s actually kind of amazing when you look at the history of HBO Max as a platform. They had a complete shite show of a launch, a ton of confusion around HBO / HBO Go / HBO Now / HBO Max, an app that was buggy as hell (and still is according to some folks). But they emerged as one of the top streaming services simply because of the amount and quality of their content.

Right now, there is a ton of speculation about the future of that content.. largely fueled by Discovery’s actions since the merger. It seems like a PR / marketing disaster for them and they don’t seem like they’re in a huge rush to reassure HBO Max subscribers.