News culture Future Game of Thrones series affected by HBO Max situation?
Published on 30/12/2022 at 17:45
HBO, whose productions are generally a guarantee of quality, was again a hit with House of the Dragon, the prequel series to Game of Thrones. The Last of Us is expected on January 15, but the platform situation is complicated.
Last April, we learned that the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery was finalized. A grouping of two giants, which have several entities that previously competed with each other. David Zaslav, CEO of this new group, has the difficult task of giving a new direction to all the subsidiaries, and this will go through a merger of the Discovery+ and HBO Max streaming services. According to the latest information released, the name of this platform would simply be Max, and it would rise directly to third place behind Netflix and Disney+:
With WarnerMedia, Discovery inherits a talented and innovative team and a dynamic, growing, global business that is well positioned to lead the ongoing transformation in media and entertainment, direct-to-consumer distribution and technology. The combination of the two companies will strengthen WarnerMedia’s established and dominant position in media and streaming, said John Stankey, CEO of parent company AT&T, in April.
This upcoming merger will have many consequences on the productions of each of the platforms, and we have already witnessed strong decision-making. Batgirl, yet shot and almost ready for broadcast, has been canceled and will not be released, while Westworld, which was to find its conclusion during a fifth season, was also canceled. For its part, House of The Dragon will have no matter what happens right to a new season, which should not however don’t wait until 2024sometime in the year.
Projects delayed due to the HBO Max / Discovery+ merger
But this is not the only production linked to the universe of George RR Martin, since there are at least six projects underway, one of which is dedicated to Jon Snow, a story about the life of Princess Nymera called 10,000 Ships, and a prequel called Tales of Dunk and Egg. But will all this be well distributed once the merger is complete? According to George RR Martin nothing is certainin particular because of the creative process and big changes underway at HBO. On his blog, he writes as follows:
I took a few days off, I admit. Shame on me, I guess. But now I’m back in the coal, working… working on so many bloody things that my head might soon explode. Yes, Winds of Winter, yes. And House of the Dragon, season two. And many of the other shows we are developing with HBO.
Some move faster than others, writes Martin on his blog. This is always the case in this type of series development. None have received an official green light, but hopefully they will…maybe soon. A few have been taken off the schedule, but I wouldn’t say they’re dead. Because you can modify your agenda, add projects as easily as remove them. In any case, all these changes at HBO Max have affected us, that’s for sure.
In the meantime, let us recall that in France, HBO content will soon disappear from the OCS catalog, the date being the transition to the new year. The contract linking the two platforms has in fact not been renewed, posing many questions about the future of content. MyCanal or Amazon Prime could recover all this, while waiting for the new WarnerBros Discovery platform to see the light of day and be deployed everywhere.
According to the information available, the new service will arrive in North America in the summer of 2023in South America in the fall, while Europe will wait until the beginning of 2024. There is however a small subtlety, because France is considered as a new market. However, these new markets will have to wait fall 2024 to discover the merged service.
A propos de House of the Dragon
