Warner Bros. Discovery has clarified its plans for the French market after speculation on launch plans for HBO Max.
It had been anticipated the HBO Max streaming service would make its French debut next year, although this was never confirmed by the media company.
On Wednesday, Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed to Broadband TV News, there would be no immediate French launch of the standalone product. “France remains a strategically important market, and we will confirm the timing of a launch in due course.”
Instead, France is likely to go straight to the combined HBO-Discovery-Eurosport product mooted in March by CEO and president David Zaslav following the combination of WarnerMedia with Discovery.
“We will not launch any new markets for the time being. We will not sort of chase aggressively behind subscriber growth as long as we are working on this priority one, which is getting these products together,” Zaslav said at the time.
Earlier this week, it emerged HBO Max will no longer produce original content in the Nordic region, Central Europe, the Netherlands and Turkey. The streamer will also remove some content from the platform in order to free up licensing deals with third parties.
Following the merger, Warner Bros. Discovery has a target of $3 billion in savings.