{"id":364283,"date":"2026-03-02T18:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T18:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/364283\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T18:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T18:25:09","slug":"paramount-says-it-will-merge-hbo-max-with-paramount-plus-if-the-warner-bros-sale-goes-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/364283\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount Says It Will Merge HBO Max With Paramount Plus If the Warner Bros. Sale Goes Through"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service Plus<\/a>. Resistance is futile.<\/p>\n

As the drama around the sale of Warner Bros. continues to swirl with Paramount now the most likely inheritor<\/a> of the studio, Paramount CEO David Ellison is carrying on like business is usual and that his latest acquisition will go through just fine and dandy<\/a>. That means we\u2019re already getting a little taste of what Ellison will do should Paramount successfully acquire Warner Bros.: starting with an unholy streaming megamerger that will bring the concept of cable TV<\/a> back harder than ever before.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers,\u201d Ellison said of the company\u2019s plan to merge Paramount Plus and HBO Max together during an investor call today, discussing the potential $110 billion deal for Skydance-Paramount to add Warner Bros. to itself (via Variety<\/a>). \u201cWe think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space at Paramount\u2014by the middle of this year, we\u2019ll have completed the consolidation of our three services under one unified stack, and you can see us taking a similar approach to this platform going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

But despite Ellison\u2019s yearning for assimilation, the CEO also said that HBO will, in some regard, maintain a level of independence should the deal go through. Ellison added that \u201cHBO should stay HBO,\u201d calling for the brand \u201cto continue doing more,\u201d even as its surroundings are subsumed into Paramount. He further noted that Game of Thrones is his favorite HBO show (doesn\u2019t he know we\u2019re all in our\u00a0Knight of the Seven Kingdoms<\/a> era now?).<\/p>\n

\u201cBy uniting our iconic studios\u2019 complimentary streaming platforms with a global footprint, our cable and linear networks, and our world-class IP, we have the opportunity to help shape the future and build a next generation media and entertainment company. This has been our goal since day one,\u201d Ellison continued (this time from The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>). \u201cThis is not about consolidation, it\u2019s about reinventing the business. We want to expand our reach and enhance our ability to create the world\u2019s most compelling stories and experiences. And we\u2019re incredibly excited about this transaction, and it will accelerate that ambition.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turns out that, for now, reinventing the business looks an awful lot like consolidation.<\/p>\n

\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[18,117,7948,19,17,5997,128,25131],"class_list":{"0":"post-364283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hbo-max","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-paramount","14":"tag-tv","15":"tag-warner-bros"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116160988741840502","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}