Paramount+ and HBO Max to become one streaming service, Ellison says

Paramount Skydance plans to combine HBO-max" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="1794" data-entity-type="location">HBO Max and Paramount+ into one streaming service, chief executive David Ellison announced during a call with investors, days after the company said it would acquire HBO parent company Warner Brothers Discovery.The deal would allow major HBO-max" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="1794" data-entity-type="location">HBO Max titles, such as The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Succession, to sit alongside Paramount offerings including Yellowstone and Survivor. Ellison said combining the two platforms would give the company over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers.“We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space,” Ellison said.Ellison said he wants HBO to “operate with independence” and said CEO Casey Bloys and his team “do a remarkable job”.“Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO. And they built a phenomenal brand,” Ellison said. When asked, Ellison said that his favorite HBO show is Game of Thrones.Paramount executives did not offer details on how subscriptions would be priced or what the new service would be called.Paramount and HBO did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The announcement comes days after Paramount Skydance won the battle to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD), HBO’s parent company, for $110bn after a drawn-out bidding war with Netflix, which capped its offer at $82.7bn.Though Ellison expressed confidence the deal would not face problems with regulators, the merger still faces possible hurdles and a backlash from critics worried about increasing media consolidation.If the deal goes through, HBO-max" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="1794" data-entity-type="location">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.Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren – who was also critical of Netflix’s bid for WBD – told the Guardian last week that the Paramount-WBD deal is “an antitrust disaster threatening higher prices and fewer choices for American families”.“A handful of Trump-aligned billionaires are trying to seize control of what you watch and charge you whatever price they want,” she said.Concerns over the future of CNN have also been raised, given the recent shakeups at CBS News. Bari Weiss, conservative commentator turned media entrepreneur, has faced multiple controversies as CBS News editor-in-chief since she was appointed last October.