Warner Bros. Discovery will launch a streaming service called Max on May 23 in the US, which will combine the existing HBO Max video library with the Discovery platform offer. The company announced this on Wednesday evening, when at the same time it presented news such as the series The Penguin or the next series of the detective Dark Case.
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The eight-part series The Penguin with Colin Farrell will be released by the Max video library next year. | Video: Max
According to the Reuters agency, the director of the company, David Zaslav, is trying to create a comprehensive video library by combining various platforms, which would play a more significant role in the market than before. Currently, the brands HBO, HBO Max and Discovery+ together have around 96 million paying users, while the better-known Netflix has around 230 million subscribers.
It was the effort to earn more from the development of streaming that was one of the reasons why last year the previously independent companies Discovery and WarnerMedia, which own HBO, merged. But when the merger was completed in April, the mood on Wall Street began to change and confidence in the streaming services declined. Rival Netflix reported a decline in subscribers for the first time in a decade, and investors began to look more than the number of paying users to whether video libraries are profitable. As a result, Warner Bros. Discovery began to save money, among other things, it suspended the production of local films and series, including those created in the Czech Republic.
According to Variety.com, the new Max platform will offer around forty new movies and series every month. “Max will be the one you want to look at,” believes the head of the company, Zaslav. The name change should not affect the current subscription amount, for more demanding viewers, at least in the US, there will be an option for a premium subscription with 4K quality video and the ability to watch up to four programs at the same time via one account.
The HBO Max video library has existed since May 2020, when Americans first started using it in the current interface and under this name. For a long time, Czechs and Slovaks were dependent on the older HBO GO platform, which was replaced here by HBO Max only a year ago. In the Czech Republic, in addition to HBO Max, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Skyshowtime, Apple TV+ and the local Voyo with Prime+ are now operating in the Czech Republic.
Warner Bros. Discovery also presented the Batman series The Penguin on Wednesday night, in which Colin Farrell will reprise his role as gangster Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot aka The Penguin from last year’s Batman movie. “A person has to ask himself what kind of world he wants to live in. This world is not made for people like me. We have to take what belongs to us,” he says in the trailer.
The new series will consist of eight episodes, in addition to Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Michael Zegen or Clancy Brown are to appear in it. The Max video library will probably release it next year. Based on the trailer, Polygon.com speculates that the series will combine the dark atmosphere of last year’s Batman with the gangster mood of The Sopranos.
Other expected titles from the new video library’s offer will include the fourth season of the crime series Dark Case with the subtitle Night Country by Nic Pizzolatto. The main roles of the investigators will be played by actresses Jodie Foster and Kali Reis. They will be looking for eight men who mysteriously disappeared from a research station in Alaska. “To investigate the case, the female detectives must face the darkness they carry within themselves and delve deep into the veiled truths buried deep beneath the eternal ice,” reads the annotation. The new series of Dark Case should be available in the Max video library this year.
Video: Trailer from the fourth season of the Dark Case series
The fourth season of the Dark Case series will be available in the Max video library later this year. | Video: Max
