Max is finally making its way down under.
Warner Bros Discovery made the news official via press release earlier this morning, confirming that "its premier streaming service Max will launch direct-to-consumer in Australia on Monday, March 31."
At this stage, the company has said that Max will be available in Australia at a variety of subscription tiers. However, it has yet to specify what the price-points attached might look like. In the United States, Max is available in standard, premium and ad-supported varieties, with prices starting at US$10/month.
According to Warner Bros Discovery's president of global streaming and games JB Perrette, the move is part of a broader initiative to globalise the footprint of the company's streaming service.
"Australia represents one of our biggest new markets and a significant opportunity to delight even more fans with the incredible stories told by our iconic brands."
The local launch of Max in Australia is set to shake up the local streaming streaming landscape in a pretty significant way. Right now, Warner Bros' catalog of movies and TV shows is scattered across a variety of streaming services. Once Max arrives, popular films like Harry Potter, Barbie and Lord of the Rings will likely all be found in the one place in the same way that Disney consolidated its portfolio when it launched Disney Plus in the region.
Max will also be the go-to destination for HBO Original series like Dune: Prophecy, The Penguin and House of the Dragon going forward. For instance, the upcoming second season of The Last of Us will be streaming exclusively via Max in Australia from 14 April 2025. Previously, that content was exclusively found through Binge so it's safe to say that the list of reasons to sign up or stay subscribed to that service is about to shrink.
It's plausible that some amount of that library might stick around on the service for now though. Just because Max is marketing itself as the home of HBO series like The White Lotus and fan-powered franchises like the DC Universe doesn't mean that stuff is necessarily going to vanish from Binge overnight. It's not impossible that the two platforms could share some content for a time either. Entertainment licensing rights are notoriously tricky like that.
Back when Paramount Plus launched in Australia (originally under the name Ten All Access), it was pitched as the home of Star Trek. However, at the time, Netflix had the international streaming rights for Star Trek: Discovery and Amazon Prime Video was the place to go if you wanted to watch Picard. All this is to say that rights and IP management is a messy business and while Max might come online in March, it might take a little longer before the service fully-delivers on its potential as a hub for the Warner Bros back-catalog.
On that note, Warner Bros has also announced a partnership with Foxtel that will see customers with a compatible Foxtel IQ box score access to a Max Basic With Ads membership at no additional cost. We'll have to wait to see all the terms and conditions attached to this alliance. However, it's entirely possible that this arrangement will work similarly to the Netflix bundling option that Foxtel introduced a while back.
Warner Bros Discovery ANZ general manager Michael Brooks framed the move as the latest chapter in the company's history of delivering "world-class content" to audiences in Australia.
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