HBO Max Won 2021 With Popcorn Films — But What About 2022?

Just over a year ago, Warner Bros. announced it would be releasing its entire 2021 theatrical film slate directly to HBO Max. For the entertainment industry, it was a bombshell. Warner Media CEO Jason Kilar was criticized, and loudly, for rushing into such a consequential decision. Sure, it was still a global pandemic, but industry professionals were hopeful that the arrival of vaccines would be followed by a return to movie theaters. Filmmakers blanched at the idea of audiences watching first-run blockbusters from their couch. Frequent WB director Christopher Nolan called HBO Max “the worst streaming service,” and Legendary, the production company behind Godzilla Vs. Kong and Dune, was reportedly furious, having received no warning in advance of the announcement.

Yet from an HBO Max perspective, the experiment was an undeniable success. In a phone interview with Decider, the Head of HBO Max at Warner Media, Andy Forssell, reflected on the decision, which was internally referred to as “Project Popcorn.” Forssell said, “As the HBO Max guy, we would’ve had a long, hard year because of the shadow of the COVID production shutdowns. Second and third quarters were pretty light on episodic [content] if you go back and look at what we released. The popcorn films helped fill that gap.”

Movies like Mortal Kombat, Godzilla Vs. Kong, and Dune—all of which began streaming on HBO Max on the same day they released in theaters—did more than just fill a gap. They drove subscriptions, catapulting HBO Max from a new platform off to a lukewarm start in May 2020 to one of the top streamers with 73.8 million global subscribers by the end of 2021 (a number that exceeded the company’s year-end projections). And, according to Apptopia, a company that tracks app downloads on mobile devices, HBO Max was the most downloaded apps of 2021 in the U.S. (Netflix and Disney+ didn’t make the cut.) HBO Max became, in many people’s minds, one of the top three must-have streaming services. But this year, Warner Bros. returns to their prior release strategy wherein big budget tentpoles are first released into theaters exclusively. Now the question is: Can HBO Max maintain its momentum without Project Popcorn?

Some of last year’s subscriber growth can be attributed to expansion—as of 2021, HBO Max is now available in 46 more countries, and also offers a cheaper, ad-based subscription tier. But most, including CEO Kilar, see it as proof that Project Popcorn was a success. Brandon Katz, an entertainment host at Morning Brew, thinks it’s safe to say that the day-and-date release of Warner Bros.’s 2021 film slate was “unequivocally” the right decision. “With the gift of hindsight, the naysayers early on would have to concede that this strategy has been vindicated,” Katz told Decider. “HBO Max had over 11 million subscribers in 2021—more year-over-year growth, from Q4 2020 to Q4 2021, than I believe even Netflix. They now have a huge base that they can fall back on.”

But will that base stick around? The last Warner Bros. day-and-date release, The Matrix Resurrections, will stream on HBO Max through January 21. Moving forward in 2022, Warner Bros. biggest theatrical films like The Batman, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, and Black Adam will have a 45-day exclusive theatrical run before moving to HBO Max. While the streaming service has announced at least 12 original movies will release on HBO Max in 2022, the fact remains that it will no longer be the need-to-have streamer for movie lovers who aren’t quite ready to return to theaters. (And, with the Omicron variant surging, there are still quite a few of those.)

“We think it was the right thing to do because again we want theaters to be healthy. As movie fans, we want to see that succeed,” Forssell said. “The good news is, we’re out of that shadow of COVID production shutdowns, and [Chief Content Officer, HBO and HBO Max] Casey Bloys’s episodic pipeline is back to full force. From an HBO Max perspective, I feel really good about transitioning into the new year. As critical as the popcorn films have been, both this last quarter and the first couple quarters are incredibly strong with what Casey is bringing to the table.”

That programming includes series like Peacemaker, a DC property starring John Cena; The Last of Us, the adaptation of the popular video game; and House of the Dragon, the highly-anticipated prequel to Game of Thrones. There is reason to believe that TV, not movies, will be the main draw of HBO Max moving forward, a theory supported by Forssell’s breakdown of the streamer’s most popular titles when he spoke to Decider in late December. “If I look at last week—and this is true for both HBO Max in the U.S. but also globally in the three regions that we are in—of the top 6 titles, 5 of them were episodic current TV,” Forssell said. “This is not in order, but: Succession, Insecure, and Curb—of course, long time HBO favorites. Just Like That…, a brand new series continuing the Sex and The City story, has done phenomenally well in its first week, exceeding our expectations. And then Sex Lives Of College Girls, a comedy first season, which is sometimes hard to build an audience for, but it’s absolutely doing it. Casey’s team is firing on all cylinders, and I think we’ll see more of that going into 2022.”

That said, movies will still be a part of HBO Max’s 2022 strategy. The original films coming to the streamer this year may not be quite as alluring as action blockbusters like Mortal Kombat and Godzilla Vs. Kong—which had the two highest opening weekend viewerships on HBO Max of all the popcorn films—but they will include a new Batgirl movie featuring Michael Keaton and a Father of the Bride remake starring Andy García. Beyond that, theatrical films like The Batman will come straight to HBO Max after 45 days in theaters, which is far sooner than the former “Pay-1 window,” aka the window when theatrical films used to come to HBO. (Home entertainment release on DVD and digital platforms will, Decider was told, be determined on a case-by-case basis, but will not come before the 45-day theatrical window.) 

But subscribers have been trained to expect blockbusters on HBO Max the same day those films open in theaters. Google Trends in 2021 were littered with queries from users wondering, “Is [theatrical movie] on HBO Max?” regardless of whether it was coming to HBO Max or not. And HBO Max doesn’t have a great track record of communicating changes to its audience. “From the jump, HBO Max branding, marketing, and communication with its potential target demographics and potential subscribers has been terrible,” Katz said. “They had a lot of consumer confusion over what the difference between HBO and HBO Max was, and confusion as they sunset HBO Go and HBO Now. Frankly, they never did a lot to clear up that confusion, some of it still exists. I’m expecting there to still be a little bit of a hangover in that regard.”

As Forssell points out, spreading the word about the 45-day theatrical window “gets a little tricky because we want The Batman, for instance, to do really well in theaters. You don’t want to be too loud and proud about the subsequent window, because that’s typically not how media marketing has worked. You will see us do a handwave that those titles are coming, but, out of respect for the theatrical window, which we all want to be really successful, you won’t see us shout that from the rooftops.” But, he said, the HBO monthly “upcoming titles” marketing will be straightforward, adding, “I don’t think people are likely to be confused.”

Forssell did concede, however, that HBO Max expects to lose subscribers—from the specific cohort of users who were in it for the popcorn films. But, he added, they’ve had a year to study their behavior, and thus have an advantage heading into 2022. “We certainly will lose some of those subscribers, because you lose subscribers from every cohort. But, it’s very predictable,” Forssell said. As he noted, some users signed up early in the year, at Wonder Woman or The Little Things, and stayed for the year’s worth of movies. Others came on to watch a specific film like Godzilla vs. Kong, then left after a month. For Forssell and his team, it’s all valuable intel. “We’ve had almost a full year to watch versions of them. We’ve gotten better at connecting them with episodic TV, or to new films that make sense to them, to convince them to stay on the service.”

Overall, Forssell feels confident about the year ahead. Katz agrees, though does expect the streamer’s growth to slow a bit in the first quarter of 2022. “If there is slower growth in Q1 I won’t be super surprised because there is no more day-and-date,” Katz said. “But having said that, I think that overall throughout 2022 we can still expect some solid growth from HBO Max. I don’t think they are going to fall off a cliff. There is a lot of reason to believe that even without the day-and-date strategy, they can build on what they’ve garnered in the last year and surge forward with new attractions for this customer base.”

More than that, Katz sees a bright future for HBO Max in the ongoing streaming wars. “I absolutely think they will be one of the last streamers standing.”

Watch The Matrix Resurrections on HBO Max