HBO Max, After A Slew Of Cancelations And Removals, Is Raising Prices

WB Discovery is attempting to dig itself out of a mountain of debt, and under the new leadership of David Zaslav, that has resulted in some of the most brutal cuts we’ve seen in the streaming space.

It’s not just surprise series cancelations like Westworld or Raised by Wolves, it’s that in many cases, shows (including those) are being stripped off the service entirely, possibly forever, possibly to be sold later to some lower tier ad-supported streaming service.

But even after cancelling shows and taking dozens of old series and movies off the service, that’s still not enough, and HBO Max, through all this, is raising prices, despite now offering less content.

I suppose you could make the argument it’s overdue, as HBO Max has remained the same price, $14.99, since its launch in 2020, and these things tend to happen over time. But timing of this in tandem with all these mass cancellations and content removal feels awful.

It’s also true that the $1 increase, which makes HBO Max $15.99, now makes it the most expensive, ad-free streaming service out there, with Netflix’s Standard tier being $15.49. Netflix does have a $19.99 Premium tier, but that’s for multi-device streaming and 4K content.

HBO is banking that Max content, which may soon merge with Discovery content, will be enough to make paying that worthwhile despite all the recent cuts. Supposedly, this current era of huge slashes to trigger writedowns is over, and from here, the focus is on building content back up again. This includes staple IPs like DC and Harry Potter.

It’s not like HBO is hurting for quality content, despite its recent problems. House of the Dragon was a big success for them, and they have a pool of a half dozen other potential Thrones spin-offs to pull from in development if they want more of that. Succession is still winning every award, every season. And now HBO is about to launch a new flagship series, The Last of Us, a big-budget apocalypse drama that’s supposed to be both a faithful adaptation of the video game and compelling for the uninitiated. I’d probably be paying $15 a month just for that, if it lives up to expectations.

Still, it’s a strange time for the service, which previously, was heralded as the best one out there in terms of overall show quality. It still has that, perhaps, but now it’s suffered from a string of headlines about brutal cancelations and content deletion that makes a price hike seem kind of laughable. But it’s already happened.

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