HBO Max and Discovery+ merge to become Max. The new platform announced many new features on Wednesday.
The Warner Bros group. Discovery on Wednesday announced the launch of its new Max platform, merging HBO Max and Discovery+, on May 23 in the United States. The group unveiled the main original content, expected in the coming years.
• A Harry Potter series
The very first series adapted from Harry Potter with its author JK Rowling as executive producer, has thus been announced.
“The stories of each of the Harry Potter books (seven volumes, editor’s note) by (JK) Rowling will become a series for a decade,” Max announced in a press release, also promising a new cast.
“Our priority is what will be on the screen,” warned HBO CEO Casey Bloys, on the sidelines of the presentation in Los Angeles, when he was questioned by journalists on the accusations of transphobia targeting the writer, who vigorously pushes them away.
“Max’s commitment to preserving the integrity of my books is important to me, and I look forward to participating in this new adaptation which will achieve a level of depth and detail that only a long-running television series can. offer,” the British novelist said in the statement.
• A prequel to ‘Game of Thrones’
To make future subscribers salivate, Max also promises a new prequel to Game of Thronesentitled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knighttaking place a hundred years before the events of the original series, and which will further feed the saga, after a first prequel, House of the Dragonin the summer of 2022.
• Classics
The new platform, where you’ll find the classics that made HBO so successful, like “The Sopranos” and more recently Successionwill be available at three rates, from $9.99 to $19.99 per month.
The service, which will also provide access to content from HGTV, Food Network, or Discovey Channel, wants to compete with the giants Netflix and Disney +, two years after the announced merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery to form a new media giant.
• New series
Other projects are in the pipeline, including a series, The Sympathizerbased on the novel The Sympathizer by Vietnamese-American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2016, and directed by Park Chan-wook, and another titled The Regimewith Kate Winslet, or a new opus by True Detective with Jodie Foster.
For now, in France, HBO and the Warner Bros. Discovery are available via a “Warner Pass” marketed for 9.99 euros per month on Amazon’s Prime Video platform.
