Don’t think that’s on you, it’s on HBO and your cable provider for not making things clear to their customers, so don’t feel ridiculous 
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Thanks. You’re right, all we were told is that they were throwing it into our care package, and that was it. They did walk us through how to use our hot spots though.
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“For HBO Max, it’s an indication that 2021 saw things trending in the right direction for the service, which most recently reported 45.2 million total subscribers at the end of September”
Correct me if I’m wrong but just getting HBO on cable/satellite doesn’t get you HBO Max so if that’s the case that’s over $677 million that HBO Max makes every month. Bazinga!
Yep, that’s the whole idea behind the streaming services.
If you can get enough subscribers, then you’ll make more money from your streaming service annually than you would from the box office annually.
And when it’s your streaming service, the money is all yours, you don’t have to share it with the theaters.
Naturally, the theaters don’t like that, because that puts them out of business.
Last year, AT&T were hoping for 120 to 150 million HBO Max subscribers by 2025.
So that would be about $2.2 billion a month from HBO Max (150 million times $15 a month). Or like two, billion dollar Batman movies every month.
Of course, it will cost a tremendous amount of money to create enough compelling content to get 150 million people to subscribe, but that’s the goal.
I believe Netflix has over 200 million subscribers. And of course they spend a ton of money creating a ton of content to have that many subscribers. And for every Squid Game there’s tons of stuff that people don’t watch. So this is not easy to do. But the money is the same whether the shows are good or not, and whether people watch them or not.
But you do of course want stuff that people actually want to watch. 
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This article points out how hard it is to compare the subscriber numbers for the various streaming services. For example, HBO subscriptions are lumped in with HBO Max subscribers, so we have zero stats for HBO Max only. Also, if everyone were to switch to the cheaper-with-ads version of HBO Max, that wouldn’t be reflected in the subscriber numbers they report, though it would slash revenue by one-third. One good thing about the 2021 strategy is that the vast majority of subscribers are so far accustomed to paying the higher $15 amount.
By my math, going from 61 million to 70 subscribers in a year gets them another 1.3 to 1.4 billion in revenue, some of which they have to spend to open up in new global markets and some they have to spend on new television shows. I don’t know if a billion is enough to cover their box office losses that are caused by films’ immediate availability at home. I hope it does, and a gain of 9 million the same year you give Amazon the finger sounds like a solid gain. But it seems like they don’t have a million to piss away here and there if they don’t have to. Thus, the question would they have come out ahead by releasing films at least a few days before they arrived on HBO Max?
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Thus, the question would they have come out ahead by releasing films at least a few days before they arrived on HBO Max?
I’m thinking they would have come out behind either way. I suppose it wouldn’t have been as bad, though.
Tenet lost most money and that wasn’t day and date. But of course there was nothing you could do about that, because very few people were going to go to the theater to see it.
Speaking of which, I didn’t really understand the Christopher Nolan thing at all. I suppose he was standing up for other filmmakers or something? Because Warner Bros. bent over backwards for him with Tenet. They moved it back multiple times and the day and date thing had no affect on Tenet at all.
And Jason Kilar admitted that he handled it all poorly and Warner Bros. eventually gave everyone their backend deals.
Denzel Washington got his $20 million dollar backend deal for The Little Things. Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins got $10 million dollars each I believe for their backend deal for Wonder Woman 1984.
I’m sure Denis Villeneuve was taken care of, and he got the Dune sequel either way, so I’m sure he’s happy.
Christopher Nolan was pissed though and took his next movie to Universal, so yeah… weird.
But yep, to win at the streaming game you have to be at well over 100 million subscribers. You have to be at Netflix levels: over 200 million subscribers and be worth about 260 billion dollars.
Or you have to be like Apple and be worth about 3 trillion dollars (which is literally what they’re worth as of January 3rd), and then it doesn’t matter how many subscribers you have…
Of course, Apple TV+ is just a side gig for them so it’s not a fair comparison.
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I’d say it was successful, if some people like myself with health problems can feel safe from the comfort of his or her home to see the movie.
It was alot of fun. The only thing I found disappointing was Disney + would charge you $30.00 to see the new movie, and if you’re the only person that’s watching the movie, it isn’t worth it. I’m also fine with the new 45 days later deal, totally understandable. 
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Yeah, I guess it was a success.
WarnerMedia’s streaming service HBO Max and HBO ended 2021 with about 73.8 million subscribers, exceeding management’s forecast, AT&T said Wednesday.
The update from the telecom giant, in a regulatory filing before the stock market open, came in advance of a session with AT&T CEO John Stankey at the Citi AppsEconomy Conference.
WarnerMedia had in July raised its year-end 2021 guidance to 70 million-73 million global HBO Max/HBO subscribers from 67 million-70 million. Back then, it had touted a “strong” fourth-quarter content slate at HBO Max, including Succession, Dune and The Matrix Resurrections. The streamer also launched, in December, its Sex and the City sequel series And Just Like That.
Yep, I liked being about to watch Dune when and how I liked. Bring on part 2 and the HBO Max Bene Gesserit series.
And The Matrix Resurrections was what it had to be.
The meta stuff that a lot of people didn’t like I absolutely loved.
Maybe they’ll do a Bugs HBO Max series. Or a Yahya Abdul-Mateen Morpheus HBO Max Series would be even better.
“And Just Like That”…
EDIT:
And for comparison, I guess they were at about 37 million subscribers this time last year.
So they doubled their subscription base.
Good for them. What they’re doing seems to be working very well.
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@ds090ddsl, you said “to win at the streaming game you have to be at well over 100 million subscribers. You have to be at Netflix levels: over 200 million subscribers and be worth about 260 billion dollars.” 73.8M is not 200M
Yeah, and I don’t think Warner Bros. is winning at the streaming game yet – in terms of being the biggest player in the space.
That said, their 73 million subscribers is bringing in about $1 billion dollars every month, so that’s pretty good. 
And they want to be at 150 million subscribers by 2025, so three years from now, and they’re halfway there.
So like I said, what they’re doing seems to be working very well.
The new subscription pace will no doubt slow down, but they’re moving in the right direction at the moment.
I suppose if they wanted to, Apple and Amazon can become the kings of streaming within the next 5 years simply because they have the most money. And Netflix would be the number three, and then everyone else. But Warner Bros. is doing very well.
(Of course, I’ve been an Apple fanboy since 1982 and am totally biased when it come them, so… )
Apple of course may not have the desire to become big in streaming and make it one of their core businesses, but being worth $3 trillion dollars gives you options.
(As an aside: as a shareholder the stock has been down the last few days so I’m a little bummed by that, but them the brakes, I guess.)
Amazon seems to be pretty serious about streaming – buying MGM (and thereby owning James Bond) and spending a half a billions dollars on their Lord of the Rings show. So I imagine it’s only a matter of time before they’re at the top of the heap.
And yeah, Apple TV+ and HBO Max are the only things that I’m subscribe to, so I do root for both of them.
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Why?
HBO Max is almost assuredly going to be adding live NHL games in the future so that’ll help grow their subscription base as well.
They’re well on pace to reach 150 million subscribers by the end of 2024.
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I do box office numbers and theatrical distribution for a living so it’s very hard for me to say that it probably was a GREAT IDEA and I personally watched almost every day and date flick on the service (and also saw about 5 of them in the theater) and it was the responsible thing (not that corporate cared about covid safety) to do in a pandemic.
I wish they’d do it again, but the film media narrative in a world where the viewership numbers are not released would frame every WB film a failure.
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Why?
Because. 
No, the Apple II was my first computer and I’ve loved their products ever since. Simple.
Anyway, I guess And Just Like That (the Sex in the City sequel) was HBO Max’s number #1 show and biggest series launch ever.
The Gilded Age debuts on January 24th…
“For a New Yorker, anything is possible.”
The Gilded Age begins in 1882 with young Marian Brook (Jacobson) moving from rural Pennsylvania to New York City after the death of her father to live with her thoroughly old money aunts Agnes van Rhijn (Baranski) and Ada Brook (Nixon). Exposed to a world on the brink of the modern age, will Marian follow the established rules of society, or forge her own path?
The Gilded Age debuts Monday January 24 on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.
I’m guessing that’s going to be pretty popular too. I know I’ve been looking forward to it for years – all the way back to when it was going to come to NBC (at least I believe that’s where it was headed).
I kind of hope that the two The Batman HBO Max spin-offs are rated R.
The Gotham City Police Department show is supposed to be about police corruption, and I guess the Penguin show will be about crime. So make them rated R so you don’t have to hold back on the violence.
The Batman will almost assuredly be PG-13, so I imagine the HBO Max shows will keep the same tone. But we shall see…
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I think it was a good idea during the first half of 2021 but became a bad idea during the second half of 2021. I’ve been watching and reading box office news every time there’s a new WB movie out, in every one of the reporters reiterate that “The day and date release experiment left so much money on the table at the box office.” I think WB should’ve played it by ear like Disney and their premier access did, based on what the theater situation is like. Disney cut the program after Jungle Cruise, July 31st. (I think they should’ve left Black Widow theaters only, but that’s just me). Movies like Dune, Matrix 4, Suicide Squad, and more that came out at the latter half of the year when lockdowns were few and far between were hemorrhaged commercially by the strategy. Sure Dune has a sequel greenlit, but that was well-known way before the movie was even released if they already had a release date set and everything ready to go.
Christopher Nolan was right for leaving WB. No matter how good of an experience streaming movies are, nothing beats going to the theater.
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Christopher Nolan appointed Zach Snyder to run the whole extended universe, and that decision resulted in another host of lost revenue for Warner Brothers (as did the theatrical release of Tenet) but no denying Mr. Nolan’s skills as a filmaker.
I particularly agree with your point on WB going out of their way to hamstring themselves at a point in the pandemic when nothing was predictable
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May take is that it was successful for pandemic viewership. In a world without a pandemic or with less severity, then theater attendance may rise enough to be different. However, now that HBO Max got subscribers that may not have interested otherwise (like me), perhaps they’ll retain subscribers even as their model shifts.
I’ll say that we picked up HBO Max intending just to use it in bursts; however, they came out with enough new movies and goodwill from that strategy that we kept it active most of the year. In contrast, we never purchased a new release from D+, never went to theaters, and promptly dropped D+ once we binged shows of interest.
A note on WW84… it’s the movie that first got us to try the service. We dropped it after that, until another new movie released (Kong vs Godzilla? I think so because then we spent a good chunk of the year watching old Godzilla and King Kong movies, lol). My main issue with WW84 was Steve being stuck in a random body. That creeped me out, and since it was just all caused by a magic wish there was no reason for it. I also thought it hurt Diana’s arc and character. I think it would have been a bigger sacrifice to actually give up Steve in Steve’s body instead of considering keeping another person’s stolen life/body. My issues with the movie would exist regardless of viewing location or reviews. If anything, having more people see it at once may have gotten a less critic/review influenced internet response, at least until the echo chamber ramped up, but that seems to happen to all movies nowadays.
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My biggest problem is them expecting me to believe that pretransformation Cheetah is homely. I can take a movie about body possession, wish stones, and super powered demi-gods seriously, but not them thinking that beautiful woman could fall like that and none of those men would rush to help her.
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I would think if they were truly happy with it they would have continued it. (although I know there was a lot of pushback from the people who made the movies and the stars so I guess that could be a part of that specific decision).
As a viewer it was successful especially given that going to the theater now means risking your health and to some extent the health of other around you. So having an alternative that cost very little is an obvious win for us.
But it did cost them a lot of money in box office money and yeah they will spin it as a win in the press releases no matter how it did. But again, they aren’t continuing it. So even though there is no way it didn’t help gain subscribers, I am guessing at the end of the day they would rather go back to the previous way of releases. Even with movie tickets not selling like they did pre-pandemic they clearly decided it was more profitable to continue that route going forward.
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Movie studios have not had to deal with headlines about whole theaters of movie-goers catching covid and winding up in the hospital. Absent that kind of catastrophe, they are just going to continue releasing their product as best they can, including in theaters. Streaming was a much safer alternative for the public in 2021, but if that was driving factor for WB, they would have offered streaming as the only option.
The super-hero gravy train is not going to continue forever for film-makers, but it will end a lot sooner if studios don’t have the potential to make a billion dollars off their project. DC Comics films require a studio willing to spend a ton of money, and without a theater release, that becomes a pointless investment.
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