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The name of the game is “Success” in Hollywood, and everyone pursues it relentlessly. But like everything, reaching the top tier and staying there is not just about money – there are a lot of brain cells involved too. And when that is excluded from the equation… it becomes irrefutable why higher-ups, drunk on their power, making all the decisions, is never a good idea.
On that cheerful idea, HBO Max… is HBO Max, again – a saga that saw millions being dumped down the drain in promotions and marketing when it transitioned from HBO Now to HBO Max, the Max.
The naming of HBO’s streaming service has been an up-and-down, left-and-right merry-go-round with more twists than arguably any show on the platform. What started as HBO Max became just Max, changed its color scheme a couple of times, and is now — surprise! — back to HBO Max. And that’s not even counting the HBO NOW and HBO GO era of the 2010s.
This is the same HBO that made The Sopranos — still considered by many to be the greatest show ever made — and Game of Thrones, among a host of other classics. You don’t need to tell me twice that an HBO show is worth the price of admission, at least for the pilot. Over the years, the network has maintained a conveyor belt of some of the best TV the industry has ever seen. They built a name synonymous with quality, which is why it was completely dumbfounding that, when every major media company was going all-in on streaming, HBO dropped the most recognizable part of their brand: their name. That would be like Disney+ launching as just “Plus.”
For years, fans and industry analysts alike were puzzled by such a bizarre decision. Then, suddenly — out of nowhere — Warner Bros. Discovery announced they’re going back to HBO Max. The writing was on the wall when the CEO of Content, Casey Bloys, at HBO Max appeared on The Town podcast and said they’d done a lot of market analysis to understand what viewers want and how they perceive the service. What they reportedly found was that fans wanted HBO-quality TV shows of various genres, documentaries, and access to the Warner Bros. library. Shocking absolutely no one. That realization finally seems to have pushed them to return to what audiences already associate with that kind of prestige programming — HBO.
People familiar with the inner workings at Warner Bros. Discovery (HBO’s parent company) didn’t waste any time pointing fingers. One user on X claimed that internal research had always shown the rebrand was a bad idea, but that one executive pushed it through on a power trip. From the outside, all signs point to JB Perrette, the head of global streaming and games.
Had a friend inside HBO at the time and apparently the entire ‘Max’ branding was one powerful exec who thought it would be a great idea contra every single piece of internal research. Just one singular guy on a power trip. https://t.co/pBmpCKF1IF
— Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 (@JeremiahDJohns) May 14, 2025
Back during the Max launch, Perrette gave a presentation justifying the name change by saying the generic name would help kids and families recognize the platform’s animated offerings. Because, in his words, “HBO is not exactly where you would drop your kids off at.”
WBD’s JB Perrette says ‘HBO’ was dropped from the name for ‘Max’ to appeal to kids:
“Our leading kids brands used to get double-digit shares of the 2-11 linear audience. In streaming, that has virtually disappeared even though all the great content & franchises are still here.” pic.twitter.com/JRbwH9fOSU
— Animation on Max (@AnimationOnMax) April 13, 2023
The C-suite at Warner Bros. Discovery has been lurching from one unforced error to the next. When David Zaslav first took over, his goal seemed to be propping up the Discovery half of the brand — where his roots lie — which includes reality TV fare like Honey Boo Boo. But his ham-fisted attempts to boost his own importance while dismissing the creatives under him have felt less like leadership and more like a parody straight out of Seth Rogen’s The Studio.
Luckily, HBO’s social media team has been doing damage control with the kind of witty, self-aware posts that poke fun at the chaos rather than trying to bury it. Honestly, they’re the real heroes of this entire saga.
The HBO Max social team is doing yeoman’s work, leaning into the absurdity of their boomerang rebrand and diffusing ridicule by getting in on the joke
This is excellent work and exactly what a social handle is for https://t.co/vbQBTpDY7m pic.twitter.com/L7LwcgKEho
— Lulu Cheng Meservey (@lulumeservey) May 14, 2025
That said, with Warner Bros. Discovery’s current track record, we can probably expect them to announce they’re replacing their entire social media team with AI by next week.