HBO Max and Paramount+ Are Officially Headed for the End of an Era

Image via HBO Published Nov 9, 2026, 5:36 PM EST Ryan O'Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided's CubbiesCrib. Whether it's taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what's going on. Outside of entertainment, he's a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor's in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys. Sign in to your Collider account This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.It's been just over a month since the merger between Skydance and Warner Bros. was finalized, yet the full impact of the over $110 billion megadeal is only just beginning to be felt. David Ellison's combined media giant agreed to produce and release a slate of at least 30 films a year, which should be easy to accomplish with both WB and Paramount remaining creatively independent from one another and 2027 already having 36 projects lined up. To fit the companies together, however, Skydance is seeking to cut $6 billion in costs, which has so far resulted in layoffs across all sectors of the company, most recently at Skydance Games. Changes are also coming to the company's streaming strategy. On Monday, the company shared in its latest quarterly earnings report that it will begin packaging HBO Max and Paramount+ in a "single bundle" that will provide access to both streamers for better value starting in early 2027. That's no real surprise, considering Warner Bros. was already aggressive in bundling its platform with competitors, but this combination is particularly meaningful. It's described as a "first step toward bringing together Paramount+ and HBO Max" into one "fully unified offering." Since the merger, Ellison has been vocal about wanting to marry the two under a single service, but details are scarce on how that will be done exactly. At the very least, Skydance believes the timeline for aligning the two platforms' backends will be quicker than how long it took to integrate Pluto TV with Paramount+. Combining the two platforms will be a tall task for Skydance, considering the technological lift such an app will require. There's an understandable fear that, like with HBO Max's merger with Discovery+, there will be a wave of content removals to consolidate the two forces. So far, though, no date is set for this union, and no strategy has been publicly shared as to how it'll be accomplished. However, there's confidence the company's new tools and experience with Pluto TV will also lead to a quicker process for creating one app that will bring shows like A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and Lanterns under the same roof as the wider Star Trek and Yellowstone universes once the backend systems are in line. “The integration of Pluto TV with Paramount+ took about 18 months. Drawing on that experience, our combined technology team, and the latest in AI tools, we expect to bring Paramount+ and HBO Max together much faster, aiming to align our backend systems within a year of closing, enabling us to quickly deliver a unified product.”