WEEKLY RECAP #107: Latest HBO Max Rebrand & Cannes Roundup (So Far)
5/11/25 -- 5/17/25
It’s Not TV. It’s HBO HBO Go HBO Now HBO Max Max HBO Max.
This past week, I officially graduated from college, spending the past five days coordinating family visits, running around to three graduation ceremonies in a row, and permanently moving out of my college dorm. Given this ungodly busy schedule, it would’ve taken a *monumentally* stupid development to convince me to stake out time reporting on movie news today — and wouldn’t you know it, the gods at Warner Bros. Discovery have blessed me. Max, the streaming service who only a month ago experienced an awkward logo upgrade, is getting yet another corporate-mandated makeover. Its new title is HBO Max… you know, what it used to be called until two years ago?
No, you have not hit your head and woken up in Groundhog Day. WB has *once again* changed the name/look of their all-inclusive streaming site. If you feel like you’re losing your mind, you’re not alone: the countless changes to the HBO Max brand have been exhausting to keep up with for everyone in the entertainment industry. Here’s a concrete timeline of this godforsaken service, starting at the very dawn of the Streaming Wars…
2010: HBO, a Pay-TV cable channel owned by Warner Bros. and known for its prestige television programming, launches HBO Go, a VOD service that allows HBO cable subscribers to conveniently view its content on mobile apps, laptops and other devices, so as to not limit their viewership strictly to television screens.
2015: HBO Now is launched as a streaming service that allows people without any cable subscription whatsoever to access HBO programming on the go. HBO Go still exists at this time, and both are considerable successes.
2019: Eager to make their first official mark in the Streaming Wars, WarnerMedia announces that their upcoming streaming service for all Warner Bros. content will be titled HBO Max, as they want to leverage the HBO brand of high-quality TV. At this time, HBO Go and HBO Now still exist, leading to confusion amongst consumers over the differences in the three apps.
2020: HBO Max officially launches with a sleek, dark purple aesthetic. Shortly after, HBO Go is discontinued. HBO Now is also cancelled once the HBO Max app becomes available on all platforms, making it the one-in-all streaming site for everything under the WB umbrella.
2021: A merger deal between WarnerMedia and Discovery, a conglomerate ran by CEO David Zaslav that specialized in factual and lifestyle TV, is set into effect.
2022: The merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery is completed, with David Zaslav taking the reins of the megacorp now titled Warner Bros. Discovery. Zaslav later announces an impending merge between separate streaming services HBO Max and Discovery+, citing the combination of HBO Max’s quality content and Disovery+’s lowest-common-denominator reality programming as an undeniable recipe for drawing in as many subscribers as possible.
2023: HBO Max and Discovery+ are officially merged into one service, now colored bright blue and titled Max, as the higher-ups at WB Discovery want their service to come across as a platform with content for folks of all ages to enjoy, rather than strictly for the adult crowd who consumes HBO programming. David Zaslav soon becomes infamous for flooding Max with a high volume of indistinguishable reality TV shows in order to “reduce churn”, whilst simultaneously cancelling movies like Batgirl that were finished shooting and deleting previously-available shows off of Max without warning. Viewers soon begin to mock the service for displaying prestige programming alongside garbage like Dr. Pimple Popper, as well as criticize Zaslav for cutting off access to beloved children’s programming and other projects in a disturbingly anti-art manner.
2025: In April, Max is given a new logo that harkens back to the original black-and-white HBO logo, baffling audiences everywhere. Then, in May, during the Upfronts conference for networks to appeal to advertisers, Max is announced to be reverting back to its previous title of HBO Max.
Listen, the streaming wars had *every* major studio scrambling to replicate Netflix’s success, so a cynical part of me can forgive WB for its shaky initial steps in figuring out how to streamline their service. However, that’s about the limit of my Devil’s Advocate defense. It’s obvious to anyone at home that that the constant name/logo changes are funny, but the reasoning behind them is kind of infuriating when you really think about it. WB initially wanted HBO Max to have the “HBO” part because it’s synonymous with fantastic narratives that are worth paying for. However, once Zaslav took control, they pivoted to a more generic title because they expected that the general masses would be most entertained by bottom-of-the-barrel garbage. Then, when that didn’t work (because, as it turns out, most people who pay for streaming actually want to watch shows that are good and don’t want to watch shows that are lazily pumped out of a corporate behemoth’s asshole), they timidly jumped back to their previous strategy, and *then* had the fucking balls to explain the rebranding with this delusionally confident, borderline psychotic statement:
“This evolution has been influenced by changing consumer needs, and the fact that no consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content. With other services filling the more basic needs with volume, WBD has clearly distinguished itself through its quality and distinct stories, and no brand has done that better and more consistently over 50+ years than HBO... Returning the HBO brand into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the offering. It is also a testament to WBD's willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach — leaning heavily on consumer data and insights — to best position itself for success.”
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! DO YOU THINK WE ALL HAVE MEMORY LOSS?! YOU CAN’T SHIT ON OTHER STREAMERS FOR RELYING ON QUANTITY OVER QUALITY WHEN THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU GUYS WERE DOING FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS! YOU MADE THE ACTIVE CHOICE TO VALUE QUANTITY OVER QUALITY, AND IT DIDN’T WORK, AND NOW YOU’RE EXPLAINING YOUR DAMAGE CONTROL BY PRETENDING YOU’RE ADAPTING TO “CHANGING CONSUMER NEEDS”?! THE CONSUMER NEEDS HAVE BEEN THE SAME FOR THE PAST TWO DECADES: PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO BE FED GARBAGE! OH, YOU’VE FUCKING “DISTINGUISHED YOURSELF”, ALRIGHT — YOU’VE DISTINGUISHED YOURSELF AS A COMPANY SPIRALING DOWN A FUCKING TOILET BOWL!!
Whatever, man. I won’t even bother breaking down why this is stupid and hypocritical — all of you reading this have brains. With the sheer number of chaotic changes Warner Bros. has seen under David Zaslav’s leadership, I will be shocked if he’s still CEO by the end of the 2020s. In all seriousness, though… how fun is this topic, eh? Stories like these are what make me so excited to cover the news, and I’m being fully serious when I say that! There’s nothing funnier than examining big studio misfires: it means I can take a brief vacation from covering doomer news about tariffs and strikes to clown on a gigantic monopolistic company acting a fool for the eleventy-seventh time. Two years ago, in Weekly Recap #6, the two stories of the week were about an HBO Max rebrand and a roundup Cannes news. Now, 101 recaps later, history is repeating itself in a glorious fashion. On that note, let’s skip on down to the other headline this week…
Cannes-cel Culture
We’re midway through May, and you know what that means: it’s time for another round of updates on the fanciest, sunniest, and snootiest celebration of film in the world, the Cannes Film Festival! With festivities having just kicked off on Tuesday and a week’s worth of premieres to go, as well as the winners of the films In Competition being announced next Saturday, there will be lots more to discuss in next week’s recap… but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been anything for me to sink my unwashed, rotting teeth into yet! Let’s take a brief look at some of the most notable premieres of the festival so far:
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. Uh… so, the early reactions for this hotly-anticipated action epic were not great! Mixed to negative, to be more precise — which is a shocker, given that the Mission: Impossible franchise is usually in good graces with critics on account of its earnest stakes and Tom Cruise’s ludicrous dedication to performing the most batshit insane stunts you’ve ever seen. However, the general sentiment around The Final Reckoning seems to be that the film is overly long with loads of unnecessary callbacks to previous entries in the franchise, albeit with a lead performance from Cruise and action set pieces that are fantastic as usual. To be clear, I’m still seated Day One for this movie after getting a taste of that biplane chase in the trailer, but my hopes have been undeniably tampered by this initial reception.
Eddington. Maestro of anxiety and deep-rooted mommy issues Ari Aster just attended the premiere of his latest movie, which is being described as even more polarizing than Beau is Afraid. (Gotta be honest, that’s just plain impressive.) Given its ambitious premise of a COVID-era social satire that devolves into murder and chaos in a small western town *and* that Ari’s first words after the screening were “I’m sorry,” I think it’s safe to say we’re in for a ruthlessly distressing time at the movies! Lord knows I’ve already detailed my bias for Aster’s work in previous recaps, so I’ll spare you the whole diatribe and just say that on Eddington’s release date of July 18, I’ll be locked the fuck in.
The Chronology of Water and Urchin. Here we have two directorial debuts from famous actors that have received solid reviews: The Chronology of Water, directed by Kristen Stewart, and Urchin, directed by Harris Dickinson. I find this positive reception quite notable, as most of the time movies directed by actors are flops. (As David Ehrlich explains in his review for The Chronology of Water, the results can often be “timid and safe with a network TV aesthetic that screams ‘I’m a lot more afraid behind the camera than I am in front of it.’”) However, Urchin has been praised for its insightful narrative, and Stewart’s direction has been described as fearless and unexpectedly intricate. Let’s hope ScarJo can keep the streak going for actors-turned-directors, as her June Squibb-led comedy Eleanor the Great is premiering later in the festival.
Die, My Love. OH YEAH, BABY — IT’S ABOUT TO BE A LYNNE RAMSAY SUMMER. This Scottish lady doesn’t often make movies, but when she does, they’re uniquely haunting and gorgeously brutal bangers like We Need to Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here… and now she’s back with Die, My Love, a movie where Jennifer Lawrence plays a woman entering psychosis during her marriage to my real-life husband Robert Pattinson. Word on the street is that this movie is nuts, with JLaw’s lead performance pulling out all the stops. Even the people who think it’s messy can’t seem to deny that it goes hard in every aspect. As a fan of Ramsay’s work, I cannot wait for this movie to put me in a bad mood in a supremely satisfying way.