Perhaps We Now Know Why The Max Original Died

A few months back, Warner Brothers made the announcement that the large franchise content they were prioritizing for the home viewer (Welcome to Derry, the Harry Potter reboot, the slate of DC programming) would no longer be considered Max Original series. These shows would be regarded as HBO originals and instead, be airing on the network before being streamed on Max after the fact rather than existing exclusively on the platform. A new lawsuit filed in New York brought by Sky may shed some light on why that decision was made.

The lawsuit (readable here in its entirety) alleges that a contract existed between Warner Media and Sky that would allow Sky to be the distributor for certain Max original shows from 2021 through 2025. The covered shows include any designed to be one hour long, exclusive to Max, and intended to run for multiple seasons. Under the contract, Warner Brothers was obligated to bring at least four series to Sky for consideration as a co-produced series annually, something that Warner Brothers has allegedly neglected to do for multiple years. This came to a head with the announcement that Warner Brothers would be making a Max original Harry Potter reboot series spanning many years that eventually got reshuffled to HBO. The lawsuit alleges that this decision was made to keep Warner Brothers from having to share that show and others with Sky as Max plans to launch in the UK and Italy (both Sky territories) in 2025.

We've seen quite a bit of this in recent years as the industry reshuffles both who controls franchises and what their streaming strategy is. We saw something similar with Paramount and Warner Brothers over the streaming rights to South Park and similar semantic trickery from Marvel Studios over their contract with Universal about ownership of Hulk solo movies (sure it's Planet Hulk but the movie is called Thor: Ragnarok so it's fine).

This is more than a simple dispute over what service someone has to have to watch a show or a movie or which multi-billion dollar corporation is getting your money; this has implications regarding viewership options in the long term. The original issue we addressed when we first discussed this was that one of the larger streamers by market share was essentially getting out of the original scripted programming game and leaving that with HBO, a linear network constrained by how much time there is in a week, in a month, and in a year. Compounding this with the fact that it appears that the existing power structures at Warner Brothers are just going to be keeping the same voices we've heard for generations telling variations on the same franchises over and over, this creates a situation where it would suddenly be harder for newcomers to break in.

Now let's take that situation and compound it with this new profoundly anti-competition allegation that has been levied on them, As Max has yet to permeate into Sky territories while Max shows have, this allows for voices from other places to get a say in what is and is not being created, not just the brass at Warner Brothers who appear to actively seek out landmines to step on. The current regime, which appears allergic to good ideas, is not only keeping more voices out of the room but actively trying to silence them by harming their competitive edge. Yes, Sky loses out on the Harry Potter reboot and the related money, but they are also losing out on subscribers once Max launches in their territories. We've seen what happens when consumer options are limited and it is possible that this attack on Sky, and if the allegations in the lawsuit are accurate an attack is precisely what this is, could wander into anti-trust litigation territory.

Maybe Warner Brothers should have just honored the contract but this is a substantial problem that has been brought to light that, hopefully, will have wide-reaching implications for the studio. A change of leadership is in order, maybe Warner Brothers will pull a Disney and oust Zazlov the way Chapek was removed because clearly this is not working.