Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision to return to the HBO Max brand for its streaming service was the elephant in the room that Jose Maria Caro, director of Max Local Original Production at WBD, Spain, addressed right at the start of his appearance at the Conecta Fiction & Entertainment in Cuenca, Spain on Tuesday.
“Many of you are asking what has happened,” he said, addressing the industry audience directly, showing a slide with an advertising message with the slogan “Max becomes HBO Max.”
“What does it mean? In terms of the content, we can’t lose the value of HBO,” the top executive explained. “It contributes much value.”
Caro highlighted that the brand also represents the core “editorial line” and focus areas for the company when greenlighting original content. “The creator is the pillar from which we begin a project,” he shared, emphasizing that ideally that a creator is “someone with great ambition who can make a difference in the market.”
Developing appealing original characters is also in focus for his team, he shared. “We are also looking for new characters,” the exec said.
Highlighting that HBO Max is about quality rather than volume of original fare, Caro also reiterated WBD’s commitment to local originals. “Without local productions, we are not going to reach the local spectators,” he explained. If they also travel, that is a wonderful bonus, he added.
Originally, the WBD streaming service launched as HBO Max in 2020. Then, in 2023, the company controversially changed the name to simply Max — ditching the venerable network brand name. Ahead the company’s mid-May upfront presentation in New York at Madison Square Garden, WBD president and CEO David Zaslav unveiled though that the name will be changed back to HBO Max.
The powerful growth we have seen in our global streaming service is built around the quality of our programming,” he said in a statement back then. “Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate that growth in the years ahead.”