This is presumably just another way to monetize content sitting around that streaming library, if not gathering dust then certainly not gathering much revenue. (Let’s not forget the edited reruns of “Sex and the City,” “The Sopranos” and more that once ran on basic cable, either.)Īnd as shameless as Zaslav has been, it’s still extremely unlikely he’ll loan out, say, the recently concluded “ Succession” or even “Thrones” - the HBO content, in other words, most likely to lure new subscribers to Max. That deal featured such marquee legacy titles as “The Sopranos” and “The Wire,” as well as some then-current series including “Girls” and “Veep,” but kept “Game of Thrones” exclusive to HBO. It’s not so different from the pact HBO struck to license shows to Amazon Prime Video back in the halcyon days of 2014. (Representatives for Netflix and HBO both declined to comment.) The Issa Rae comedy “Insecure,” which wrapped in 2021, is one title reportedly under discussion. By the reported terms of the prospective Netflix deal (which has not been finalized), licensed HBO titles will not be current programming such as “House of the Dragon” or “The Last of Us” but concluded series. By the same token, where HBO’s catalog was supposed to be the crown jewel of WBD’s flagship streaming offering (even as the company sheared “HBO” from that service’s moniker), it’s now just another tool in Zaslav’s ongoing quest to squeeze as much free cash flow as possible out of WBD assets. WBD has led this charge, pulling dozens of titles from HBO Max to loan out to FAST platforms instead. The walled gardens that once defined the streaming wars are starting to crumble as the legacy media players strive to turn their services profitable by any means necessary, including renewed content licensing. The news that WBD is in talks with Netflix to loan out HBO titles is totally in keeping with this pattern, though it does epitomize how profoundly the direct-to-consumer game has changed in just over a year.

But as the past year has proved, WBD CEO David Zaslav will do almost anything short of a memorabilia auction to generate cash to pay down the company’s massive debt load, and he’s perfectly willing to pivot away from what was once conventional streaming business wisdom in the process. Yes, the two companies’ rivalry is well documented. Yes, this would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Discovery would license HBO shows to Netflix? Is it really so surprising that Warner Bros.

Netflix free account and password 2021