HBO

As explained by Front Office Sports, the NBA is waiting to see if TNT parent Warner Bros. Discovery will try to match any part of the reported $76 billion in offers from NBC, ESPN, and Amazon.

WBD’s (not-HBO) Max could try to match Prime Video, but with a smaller audience than Amazon’s service, matching might not be enough.

Kite Man — a man whose power is having a kite — isn’t really the kind of DC character you’d expect to see starring in their own animated series. But you can kind of see the appeal to Kite Man: Hell Yeah! (out July 18th) when you hear Stephanie Hsu as an explosive ice skiter and Keith David as a drunken Darkseid.

In terms of blockbuster sci-fi cinema, July 4th will always belong to the original Independence Day, but this year the holiday will also see Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire finally become available to stream on Max.

HBO is banking on a new Harry Potter adaptation to ensure its future success, and the network announced today that the project will be written / executive produced by Francesca Gardiner (Succession, His Dark Materials) and directed by Mark Mylod (Game of Thrones, The Last of Us).

Jeffrey Wright’s mo-cap performance brought Isaac Dixon to life in The Last of Us Part II, and now he’s set to reprise the role in season two of HBO’s adaptation.

Problemista — Julio Torres’ brilliant surrealist comedy about finding your people — is finally hitting Max on June 28th. But if that’s too long a wait, and you’re itching for some of Torres’ absurd humor a bit earlier, his new series Fantasmas is scheduled to premiere on June 7th.

It’s live in 20 countries now and will reach 25 by July 1st. Warner Bros. Discovery also has bundle deals in place with providers like Telefonica and Vodafone.

In these European countries, Max will be the only way to stream every 2024 Olympic Games event live, it offers “double the amount of content” versus HBO Max, and House of Dragons season two will premiere on June 17th.

MoviePass, MovieCrash — director Muta’Ali’s documentary chronicling how two growth-obsessed executives ran the innovative theater subscription service into the ground — made a spash at this year’s SXSW. And now the movie’s slated to make its streaming debut on Max later this month.

Like Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon has alluded to how the great oncoming winter is the actually the biggest threat the people of Westeros will face.

But the prequel series’ latest season two trailer is firmly focused on the past at a time when all the matters is the war within the fractured Targaryen family.

Batman: Caped Crusader jumping ship to Amazon Studios after the Warner Bros. Discovery merger made it seem like the project might never see the light of day. But the series now has an August 1st premiere date, and it seems like when the show drops, it will be introducing yet another new Harley Quinn riff.

That’s what WBD CEO David Zaslav said when talking about Max’s new bundle with Disney Plus and Hulu during an earnings call on Thursday. He said that there will “likely be a restructuring of how people view content:”

There’s a lot of irrationality in the market that’s getting shaken out in terms of the amount of money spent... Ultimately, I think the business will look very different in two to three years — and it will be much better for consumers.

In its earnings report released on Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery revealed that Max gained 2 million subscribers over the past few months, bringing its total subscriber count to 99.6 million members.

Ahead of Warner Bros. Discovery’s earnings report on Thursday, Bloomberg reports that the company may announce more layoffs and raise prices on its Max streaming service, which already costs $9.99 per month with ads.

The first season of My Adventures with Superman left most of the superheroic heavy lifting to Clark Kent (Jack Quaid) as villains terrorized metropolis. Even more of Superman’s classic foes are making their way to the show in its second season (out May 25th.) But this time around, the Man of Steel is going to have a bit more Kryptonian muscle on his side.

Actors Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell have been tapped to star in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: the Hedge Knight.

HBO ordered the (yet another) GoT spinoff to series last year, which follows “two unlikely heroes … a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall (Claffey), and his diminutive squire, Egg (Ansell).”

Netflix hasn’t cancelled I Think You Should Leave, but Tim Robinson has just snagged a green light order for The Chair Company, a new HBO series about a man who “finds himself investigating a far-reaching conspiracy” after an embarrassing mishap at work.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s longstanding partnership with GKids has given it the exclusive streaming rights to Studio Ghibli films since 2020, and now that the companies have renewed their deal, we can expect to see The Boy and the Heron hitting Max in the next few months.

HBO still hasn’t announced the official premiere date for House of the Dragon season 2, but according to a new report from Variety, it’s probably going to be a good idea to get all caught up on the show by this June.

Fubo sued Warner Bros. Discovery, ESPN, and Fox last month over their planned live sports streaming service. Here’s what Fubo CEO David Gandler had to say about the lawsuit during a conference call:

This is a duel to the death. It has been when we started this company. We’re fighting for consumers. We’re fighting for our customers. We’re fighting for the tens of billions of dollars that are wasted annually on consumers paying for the same content multiple times. This is a very important process. We are sticking to our principles, to our guns. We are continuing to walk and chew gum at the same time, as you see in our numbers.

Warner Bros. Discovery has stopped pursuing an acquisition of Paramount, sources tell CNBC. However, other potential buyers are reportedly still exploring a deal to acquire Paramount, including the production company Skydance Media and media mogul Byron Allen.

Although Comcast isn’t interested in buying Paramount Global, CNBC reports that the company is still looking into a partnership with the brand, which could involve bundling or merging streaming services.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during an earnings call that the studio is “aiming” to release its upcoming Harry Potter TV show on Max in 2026. The company first announced the show last year, saying it will be a “decade-long series produced with the same epic craft, love and care this global franchise is known for.”

During Warner Bros. Discovery’s earnings call on Friday, CEO David Zaslav said bundling streaming services “just makes an awful lot of sense.” He also hinted at Max becoming a distributor of streaming channels, like Roku or Amazon:

These channel stores morphed into places that just provide a simpler and easier and less anxious experience for people to find the content that they want... I‘ve always advocated that we should do it ourselves, and so we’re looking to do that domestically, we’re looking to do it outside the US.

Zaslav adds that WBD’s upcoming sports venture with ESPN and Fox “is trying to meet that very need.”

The film gives us a look at the life of Willy Wonka (played by Timothée Chalamet) before he opened his famed chocolate factory. If you didn’t get a chance to see Wonka in theaters, you can stream it on Max starting March 8th.

You can start streaming the Aquaman sequel starting on Tuesday, February 27th.

As noted in my colleague Charles Pulliam-Moore’s review of the film, The Lost Kingdom has some stunning visuals, but it’s held back by a predictable storyline that makes it feel “like a product of the DCEU,” which has been plagued with issues over the past several years.