HBO Max And Paramount Plus' Fate Under Skydance Officially Confirmed

After 10 months of hostile bidding, negotiations, and legal battles, Paramount Skydance has officially completed its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery. The new, merged company will be called Skydance. The sale was finalized Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026, for $110 billion, charting an uncertain course for the future of the film and television industry.

Following both this acquisition and that of Paramount Global in 2025, Skydance has become the sole owner of some of the biggest media entities in the world, including Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, CBS, CNN, and HBO. One major impact for consumers is the prospect of a new, unified streaming service that will seemingly merge the libraries of Paramount+, Discovery+, and HBO Max. A statement from Skydance released Tuesday did not disclose the name of this new streamer, when it would be launched, or what it would cost subscribers. Rather, it promised that "consumers can expect greater innovation from a company built with technology at its core, including significant improvements to its direct-to-consumer streaming products, which will unify into a single service over time."

HBO Chairman and CEO Casey Bloys has been announced as the co-chair and chief content officer for Skydance DTC, the arm of the company that will handle its current streaming operations — and, presumably, this proposed streamer. WBD Global Streaming and Games CEO JB Perrette will also serve as co-chair and chief business officer. These hiring decisions may well indicate that HBO's brand identity is intended to endure the merger more than Paramount's.

In the late 2010s and early 2020s, streaming boomed into a dizzying web of services, each with their own libraries, brand identities, content goals, and pricing models. Toward the end of the decade, however, the streaming craze has reversed course.

Paramount+ has done its part (absorbing Showtime and BET+), but Skydance is hardly the only company with this ambition. Disney has effectively merged Disney+ and Hulu into one service despite temporarily maintaining individual apps for each; Amazon, meanwhile, has taken a slightly different approach, allowing their users to subscribe to separate content libraries through the Prime Video platform. Not to mention the fact that Skydance had to chase away Netflix during its bid for Warner Bros., with Netflix eyeing HBO Max for potential absorption. Apple is one of the few "independent" holdouts, despite previous rumors of a play for Disney.

Bottom line, megastreamers like the as-yet-unnamed "Skydance+" will have the biggest impact on pricing and content. It will likely be cheaper than subscribing to all the services individually, but more expensive than subscribing to only one of them. They will likely produce fewer original series with ambitious budgets. The content goals will change, too: David Ellison's Paramount+ has leaned on live sports while letting "Yellowstone" visionary Taylor Sheridan defect to NBCUniversal. We should expect these maneuvers — as well as large layoffs, price hikes, and increasing reliance on AI — from Skydance especially, given they now carry roughly $80 billion in debt.