HBO Max is being scrapped: The series and films are moving to this streaming service

• Streaming service HBO Max will be discontinued in summer 2023.
• Content such as “The Flight Attendant” is transferred to sister company Discovery+.
• In Germany, HBO Max cannot be booked at all – but you can find a lot of the content on Sky.

The US streaming service HBO Max will not exist for much longer. And the entertainment giant WarnerBros Discovery, which recently emerged from HBO parent company Warner and media giant Discovery, has already decided what will happen to the content of HBO Max:

In the summer of 2023, HBO Max is to be fully absorbed into the sister streaming service Discovery+ – so the HBO Max brand will disappear completely. Series originals such as “The Flight Attendant” and “Tokyo Vice” will then be shown on Discovery + – whether the production of new seasons will be continued will probably be decided on a case-by-case basis. For some originals, however, the dissolution of HBO Max will certainly mean the end.

Why is HBO Max being discontinued?

Since the elephant wedding between the media empires Warner and Discovery, it was actually clear: Two international streaming services and thus competition in-house makes little sense – either HBO Max or Discovery + sooner or later the plug had to be pulled.

According to the US industry magazine “The Verge”, HBO Max was finally released for launch because the streaming service was continuously suffering from technical problems. According to the head of WarnerBros Discovery, the newer digital infrastructure of Discovery+ should enable stable streaming performance in the future.

What does the end of HBO Max mean for German streaming customers?

Since the streaming service HBO Max has not yet started in Germany, not much will change here with the termination of the service. The most important content from HBO and HBO Max is still licensed to pay-TV provider Sky until 2025 anyway – you can switch on many of the US productions on Sky and stream them via Wow.

Discovery+ is now even part of the Sky offer, so migrating the content from HBO Max to Discovery+ would change little for German streaming customers beyond the rights deal. Of course, this assumes that Sky will continue to agree with the new media giant WarnerBros Discovery.

In view of the merger of HBO Max and Discovery+, it would also be quite conceivable that the streaming service, which has grown with content, should also be put on its own feet in this country and Sky would lose the rights to HBO hits like “Game of Thrones” and “Westworld” in the future could. So far, however, this is all still a dream of the future.