HBO Max will be replaced next year by a new service combined with Discovery Plus

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Max is alive and well. Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav said on an earnings call that there will be a new service coming in the summer of 2023.

Hobo Max has a competitive feature set, but it has had performance and customer issues, according to Zaslav, being more polite than I would be about the app. He said that the core of the new service would be Discovery Plus and that it would combine the content of HBO Max with it.

Zaslav said later in the call that the company wouldn't be going on a cancellation spree and that the product was going to be great. After a week of worry for users, this news is good. The company decided to take the complete Batgirl off the release calendar and put it in the vault. The films are still available to rent or purchase. The Wrap reported that things were not going well for the creative development teams.

During the call, Zaslav tried to calm those fears by saying that the programming was good and supported by the company at large. During the question and answer segment of the call, Zaslav said that HBO Max has begun to become a brand in and of itself. It is not clear what Warner Brothers Discovery will call the new combined service, but it is certain that we will hear more about it in the year to come.