Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is allowing his fingerprints to be wiped clean from the HBO brand, as the streaming platform Max will once again be called HBO Max. Cue the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme song.
The once and future HBO Max will take up the title again this summer, WBD announced in an irony-free press release. With a straight face, the company boasts that this name change “is also a testament to WBD’s willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach” — and here, “boldly iterating its strategy” is presumably a ChatGPT translation of “ass-covering retreat.”
The full Max facts make for involved reading, but WBD dropped HBO from its streaming branding back in 2023. This was a time when Zaslav wanted WBD to be known for brutal and embarrassing cost-cutting measures, which didn’t quite match HBO’s upscale audience.
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Despite some new corporate overlords, HBO continues to live up to the promise of its original tagline “It’s not TV…” offering revolutionary comedies like The Rehearsal alongside blockbuster dystopias such as The Last of Us. And as for the “Discovery” part of WBD, well, did you know that in 2025 Dr. Pimple Popper returned for a ninth season? Talk about breakout success! In other words, you can see why WBD is ready to once again lead with HBO — especially if any of those long-rumored streamer mergers ever come together.
Content shared from consequence.net.