John Oliver greeted the Last Week Tonight viewers by taking a swing at “business daddy” Warner Bros. Discovery after announcing the rebranding of HBO Max to Max.
“Our business daddy took its content purge up a notch and threw the whole HBO out,” he said at the top of the late-night show.
Earlier this week, Warner Bros. Discovery announced their new streaming service that would merge content from streaming service HBO Max and Discovery+. The name of the new streamer would simply be known as Max.
“The Max service is a wide-ranging mosaic of content that will be unmatched in the breadth, reach, and excellence of its offerings,” said Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO, HBO and Max Content. “We are unique because we have the best-in-all-categories across the board by any measure – be they ratings, awards, fandom. We know we can satisfy any craving because we have the brands that people love. At Max, they will find what they want, when they want it.”
Oliver has previously been critical of the cancellation of films and series at Warner Bros. Discovery that included the DC film Batgirl. Prior to that, Oliver took a shot at streaming service HBO Max for pulling shows “to appease Wall Street.” In the Last Week Tonight season finale in Nov. 2022, Oliver called out HBO’s parent company again saying they were “too busy canceling shows.”
Max will launch on May 23 in the U.S. with all existing HBO Max subscribers having access to the new service. The service will have three pricing tiers starting at $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year for the Max-Ad Lite tier, $15.99 a month, or $149.99 a year for the Max Ad Free tier and $19.99 a month, or $199.99 a year for Max Ultimate Ad Free tier which also includes streaming in 4K.
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