If you were getting excited about the long overdue UK launch of US streamer HBO Max, home to Originals including Game of Thrones and The Sopranos, later this month, hold your fire – Paramount Skydance chief executive David Ellison has announced during a call with investors that he plans to combine HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single streaming service, assuming his company’s drawn out take over of HBO parent Warner Bros Discovery goes ahead.
The deal would allow major HBO Max titles, which also include Sex in the City and Succession, to sit alongside Paramount offerings including Yellowstone and South Park. Ellison said combining the two platforms would give the company “more than 200 million” D2C subscribers.
“We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space,” Ellison added.
In better news for fans of high-end drama, Ellison insisted he still wants HBO to “operate with independence,” and does “a remarkable job.”
“Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO. And they built a phenomenal brand,” Ellison, who said his favourite HBO show was Game of Thrones, added.
Paramount executives did not offer details on how subscriptions would be priced or what the new service would be called.
The announcement comes days after Paramount Skydance finally won the battle to acquire Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) for $110bn, following a protracted bidding war with Netflix, which capped its offer at $82.7bn.
Though Ellison said he is confident the deal will not face problems with regulators, the merger still faces possible hurdles and a backlash from critics worried about increasing US media consolidation.
If the deal goes through, HBO Max, along with Warner BrosStudios and CNN, would join Paramount Skydance’s slate of existing brands, including CBS, Paramount Pictures and Showtime.
Critics of the merger have raised concerns over possible censorship and political bias given Ellison’s close relationship with Trump, who gave the green light to the merger between Ellison’s Skydance Media and Paramount last summer.
Of particular concern is the future of long-running 24/7 news channel CNN, a favourite target of Trump in his ongoing campaign against “radical leftists” and “fake news,” particularly given the recent Trump-inspired shakeup at CBS News, where stories have been pulled at the flagship 60 Minutes following conservative commentator Bari Weiss’ 2025 appointment as editor-in-chief, and Trump’s attempts to sue what he perceives as “non-friendly news outlets, including (but not limited to) The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and famously his ongoing “$10bn” spat with the BBC.
