Earlier this week, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that Max, its streaming service previously known as HBO Max, is changing its name… back to HBO Max. The new/old name comes back this summer.
The reasoning for this name reversion? It occurred to WBD CEO David Zaslav that HBO is a valuable brand name:
David Zaslav, President and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said: “The powerful growth we have seen in our global streaming service is built around the quality of our programming. Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate that growth in the years ahead.”
Warner Bros. Discovery is trying to self-ridicule HBO Max’s various name changes. Their press release and social media accounts include a meme from everyone’s favorite “Living Single” knockoff, “Friends.” Still, it doesn’t change how embarrassing the “Max” name change looked, as that renaming was widely panned. The “Max” name has plenty of flaws:
- It’s harder to search by itself online.
- The name sounds too generic: “Mad Max?” Cinemax? Montana Max of “Tiny Toon Adventures?”
- HBO is a popular brand, so it made little sense to drop it from the name, especially if Warner Brso. Discovery wasn’t going to call their service some iteration of “Warner” instead. Perhaps avoiding HBO and Warner as name options, when every other studio-owned streaming service name refers to its owners (Paramount+, Peacock, Disney+, etc.), is a sign of the Discovery people in charge’s level of regard for the Warner side?
- Maybe the biggest reason of all: everyone kept calling Max “HBO Max” anyway. I never even changed the blog’s “HBO Max” post tag all this time!
Several years ago (before “Max”), I might’ve recommended HBO Max as a viable Netflix replacement. HBO Max had enough content variety to serve as a “catch-all” service like Netflix. Nowadays, between HBO Max’s content purges, TV show cancellations, cost, and focus on reality shows, I’d only recommend the streaming service for HBO fans, hardcore fans of a few specific franchises (Adult Swim, DC Comics, Turner Classic Movies), or sports fans. Otherwise, much of Warner’s catalog, especially its animation library, is available on other services: Tubi, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, etc. Why bother paying for Max (which is one of the pricier streaming services) when a chunk of the studio’s catalog is on services most people already use?
Image: HBO Max logo (2025 version). (Warner Bros.)
I totally thought the name change was a regional thing. I’m in Spain and when we first signed up it was called HBO Nordic lol. I always just called it HBO though.
That’s another problem with the “Max” name: they still called it “HBO Max” in much of the world outside the US. Probably because another problem with just “Max” is it’s English-specific as a name; it might mean something else in another language, or clash with some existing trademarks?
Right like here in Spain, until recently ‘Dunkin Donuts’ operated as ‘Dunkin Coffee’ because Bimbo bread company owns the trademark for ‘Donuts’ lol. Maybe that’s why recently they all rebranded to ‘Dunkin’…. ?
They rebranded here as “Dunkin'” as well. (Their slogan stateside is “America Runs on Dunkin’.”) Bimbo exists here as a bread brand too, but I’ve never associated them with donuts.