Twelve hours into the new Skydance, David Ellison has already answered the biggest question hanging over its streaming arm. The plan, he told reporters Tuesday, is to turn HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single service.
That puts the company’s incoming streaming chief, Casey Bloys, in an awkward spot. Last week, Bloys said he expected the two platforms to remain separate, offered together as a bundle. On Tuesday, his new boss said that is only the short-term play.
One app is the endgame
Ellison framed the combination as a “long term” objective. “Long term,” he said, he plans to “bring HBO Max and Paramount+ together.”
The obstacle is technical. Streaming services run on distinct tech stacks — the software infrastructure behind sign-up, billing, playback and recommendations. Combining two of them is a heavy engineering job, and Ellison acknowledged “it’ll take a period of time.” He added: “in the immediate you will see them operated separately.”
Bundle first, merge later
The sequencing is the important part for consumers and buyers. A bundle of the two services will arrive “in the relatively short term,” Ellison said, while the full product merger follows later. He declined to be specific on bundle pricing or structure.
He did argue that artificial intelligence changes the timeline. “Given the way AI technology and other things have progressed, we think we can actually accelerate how quickly we accomplish that goal,” he said.
That sequence roughly matches what Bloys described at Bloomberg’s Screentime event, when he pointed to the HBO Max-Disney bundle as a model that “has been very successful.” What Bloys did not forecast was the endgame his boss has in mind: one app, not two.
The 200 million subscriber argument
The strategic logic rests on a figure Ellison has used since March. “We do plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct to consumer subscribers,” he said, repeating the number Tuesday. That scale, he argued, lets Skydance “compete with the Disneys and Netflixes and Amazons and anybody in the world.”
For the combined Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery assets now operating as Skydance, scale is the point. Two hundred million-plus streaming accounts would change its negotiating position on content licensing, advertising sales and platform distribution.
What it means for buyers
For media planners and entertainment marketers, the practical read is to plan for two phases.
- Bundle first: expect a joint HBO Max/Paramount+ offer before the apps are actually combined.
- One platform later: the merged service would create a single ad-supported inventory pool across two very different audiences — premium HBO drama and broad Paramount entertainment.
- Brand continuity: Ellison has said HBO will “operate with independence,” so its premium positioning should not shift quickly.
The unknown is time. Ellison promised speed, but streaming tech-stack integrations have historically been slow, risky and expensive. Buyers should treat bundle pricing as the first concrete signal of how aggressive the new Skydance intends to be.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
