HBO Max: Not Max Yet
HBO will always have a special place in my heart. As a kid, my parents ponied up for the premium channel and I enjoyed discovering many great and not-so-great movies on it.
Then HBO pivoted hard to original series and became the gold standard by leveraging its unique advantages of not having to conform to broadcast standards or appease advertisers. This ushered in a new era of TV and attracted top Hollywood talent who previously viewed the medium as inferior to feature films.
Now WarnerMedia, HBO’s parent and a division of AT&T, is utilizing the HBO brand for its new streaming service.
Is Max more Netflix or Disney+?
The obvious comparison is with Netflix. When Netflix started getting serious about original programming in 2013, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, stated that “the goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” Recently Warner pulled Friends from Netflix so that it could serve as one of Max’s marquee shows, though the reunion special has been put on hold because of the pandemic.
But while originals are incredibly popular on Netflix, it still maintains a deep library of licensed content that is only available for a limited period of time. Users have come to expect that the non-original content is ephemeral and many news outlets publish lists of movies and TV shows that enter and exit the service every month.
On the other hand Disney+’s catalog is meant to expand over time and never contract. Before the service’s launch Disney aggressively renegotiated content deals with partners so that its most high profile movies would be available when the service launched. It is safe to assume that any new Disney, Pixar, Marvel or Star Wars film will be available on Disney+ within six or seven months of debuting in theaters, and will remain there indefinitely. The Disney Vault that I grew up with where titles would be made available for limited periods of time is no more.
Max is not max
WarnerMedia has also been working to bring its content home to make it available on its new service (I was surprised to see the Harry Potter films at launch which used to be tied up in a 5 year deal with NBCUniversal), but there are a lot of missing titles.
For example, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is no where to be found despite the fact that it was featured in HBO Max’s promotional material (in fact I can’t find any Nolan-directed films at all). Also, I was under the impression that Max would include the DC Universe originals, but Titans and Harley Quinn aren’t there despite Warner owning DC Universe outright.
My guess as to why there are so many holes in the back catalog at launch is that WarnerMedia decided to get into the streaming game much later than Disney and hasn’t had as much lead time to unwind existing deals for its content.
Trending in the right direction?
I’m hoping that Max’s library will become more complete over time as the legacy licensing deals expire or get renegotiated. It looks as if Warner Bros’ biggest movies of 2019 (Joker, It Chapter Two, Detective Pikachu, Shazam!) are all here which is promising. However these films are also currently included with regular HBO, so it remains to be seen if they will cycle out of Max when they cycle out of HBO.
Should you subscribe?
HBO Max is a superset of HBO, and HBO has many of my favorite shows (Game of Thrones, Watchmen, Westworld, Chernobyl, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver) so for me it’s a no-brainer. There are some interesting titles in development which will be Max exclusives (particularly Dune: The Sisterhood), but a number of those have been delayed due to our favorite virus. In the meantime I finally have a legal means to watch some of Hayao Miyazaki’s iconic films thanks to the inclusion of Studio Ghibli.
At $15 HBO Max is almost as expensive as Netflix’s premium tier ($16), but at that level Netflix will give you four streams in 4K HDR, while HBO Max only gives you three streams at 1080p (Warner says 4K HDR is on its roadmap). It’s also more than twice as expensive as Disney+ at $7, however to get Disney’s grown-up content you’ll also need Hulu ($12 without ads), whereas WarnerMedia only has one service.
No matter how it compares with the competition, if you’re stuck at home now may be the perfect time to catch up on Game of Thrones, and the cost of an HBO Max subscription is probably less than what you’re currently saving on gas.
