HBO Max Expected to be ‘Shut Down’
Last year, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that the company will put “HBO” back in the name of its streaming service HBO Max after previously changing its name to just Max.
Now, Warner Bros. Following the merger between Discovery and Paramount, it looks like the future of the popular streaming platform may be in question, as a leading media analyst expects HBO Max could be “shut down” by the end of 2027.
HBO Max, Paramount+ Merger
Warner Bros. Following news of Discovery and Paramount’s merger, Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that Paramount+ and HBO Max will be combined into a single streaming service, although details are scarce.
A name, pricing structure and overall organization for the new combined streaming service have yet to be determined, but Ellison also suggested he wants HBO to be able to operate independently of Paramount.
“HBO should stay HBO,” Ellison said last week while praising HBO content president Casey Bloys in his latest call with industry analysts. “Casey and his team are doing an absolutely remarkable job at HBO, and we plan to be able to work independently so HBO can do what it does incredibly well.”
But it’s unclear how HBO will maintain its independence while being incorporated into the Paramount ecosystem and existing on the same app as Paramount+ content.
HBO Max Is Expected to ‘Shut Down’
While Zaslav and Ellison have stated that HBO Max and Paramount+ content will be rolled into a single app, both sides of the deal have been relatively cautious about what the new service will look like, and Ellison’s vague insistence that HBO should remain independent only raises questions about what that might look like going forward.
Amid these questions, one prominent media analyst predicted that HBO Max will be “essentially shut down” by the end of next year.
“We expect HBO Max to be shut down by the end of 2027,” MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman wrote in a research note this week, via Variety’s Brian Steinberg. In a post on X.
There are obviously still a lot of questions about the future of this merger and how exactly it will happen, but just a few months after Zaslav called the HBO brand “the highest quality in media,” it looks like that name will be gone once again.
This story was first published by . Men’s Magazine First appeared on March 7, 2026 Entertainment section. Add Men’s Journal at: Preferred Source by clicking here.
