HBO Max Expected to be 'Shut Down'

Last year, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that the company would be putting the "HBO" back in the name of its streaming service, HBO Max, after previously changing the name to simply Max.

Now, after a merger between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount, it sounds like the future of the popular streaming platform could be in question, as one prominent media analyst expects that HBO Max could be "shut down" by the end of 2027.

HBO Max, Paramount+ Merger

Following the news of the merger between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount, Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that Paramount+ and HBO Max would combine into a single streaming service, though details are scarce.

A name, pricing structure, and overall organization have yet to be determined for the new combined streaming service, but Ellison also seemed to suggest that he wanted HBO to be able to operate independantly from Paramount.

“HBO should stay HBO,” Ellison said during a recent call with industry analysts last week as he praised HBO content chairman Casey Bloys. “Casey and his team are doing an absolutely remarkable job at HBO and we do plan for that to be able to operate with independence, so that HBO can candidly do what it does incredibly well."

It's not clear, however, how HBO is going to maintain its independence while being absorbed into the Paramount ecosystem and existing in the same app as Paramount+ content.

HBO Max Expected to be 'Shut Down'

While Zaslav and Ellison have both indicated that HBO Max and Paramount+ content will be rolled into one app, both sides of the deal have been relatively cagey about what the new service will look like, and Ellison's vague insistence that HBO should remain independent only adds to the questions about what this could look like going forward.

Amid these questions, one prominent media analyst has predicted that HBO Max will "essentially be shut down" by the end of next year.

“We expect HBO Max to essentially be shut down at the end of 2027,” MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman wrote in a research note this week, via Brian Steinberg of Variety in a post on X.

There are obviously still many questions about the future of this merger and how exactly this will all transpire, but just a few months after Zaslav called the HBO brand "the highest quality in media," it sounds like the name could be going away once again.