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Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) is to roll out its Max platform in 22 countries in Europe from spring 2024, followed by launches in France and Belgium later in the year.
However, there was no news about plans for the UK market where HBO has a licencing deal with Sky.
The launches were announced during a Mipcom keynote today by Warner Bros Discovery’s (WBD) international head Gerhard Zeiler, alongside SVP head of streaming EMEA Leah Hooper Rosa.
Max will initially launch in the 22 countries across the Nordic region, Iberia, the Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe that currently offer HBO Max.
The enhanced service will then launch in France and Belgium in 2024. HBO Max is not presently in France and Belgium, where WBD has an output deal with Amazon Prime Video.
WBD started transforming HBO Max into Max in May this year in the US, combining scripted offerings from HBO with Discovery’s unscripted staples.
In Europe, Max will stream live sport through Eurosport. Coverage of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 will be streamed live and on demand on Max. Max will also offer live simulcasts of WBD local entertainment networks in some countries.
During his keynote, Zeiler also underlined the importance of theatrical to WBD, as well as streaming and linear.
“We are not a one trick pony. We don’t believe that putting everything into one window is the right business model and it’s good for the consumer. We 100 percent believe and are committed to the theatrical releases, nothing is more important, and more impactful than a threatrical release. We believe in the various transactional ways of distributing, we believe in streaming 100%. That’s our growth engine in the future. But we also believe in linear.”
Zeiler also stressed that WBD is “not religious about having everything” for its own networks. ”Our goal is to maximise reach and maximise also monetisation. If we see that in certain markets and certain programmes, it makes sense to send it to third parties, we are doing that.”
Zeiler addressed the success of Warner Bros’ Barbie, which has taken $1.4 billion at the global box office and is the biggest Warner Bros film of all time. “It shows that you can only have a great film if you have a good marketing campaign. And you also hit the zeitgeist, meaning your show has a theme, a message, a narrative, which is relevant for millions of people’s. Then you can get to these numbers.”
Zeiler’s keynote came just weeks after he announced his new international leadership team following a series of departures.
Referencing the restructures, he said WBD set goals 18 months ago when it started to bring together Warner Bros and Discovery into one company: “Number one, we wanted to define what is the mission and what is our vision? The second goal was to execute this integration as fast as possible, and I won’t lie as efficiently as possible. And the third goal was to create a new culture of these two distinctive companies.”
In terms of the WBD mission, Zeiler said: ”We are a content company. We’re not selling connectivity or anything else. We are storytellers. That’s our mission. That is our vision.”
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– Armessa Movie News