After a nearly year-long process, Paramount has announced that it has completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery for $110 billion. The two companies are now officially combined under the name Skydance, bringing Paramount’s and Warner Bros.’ film and television operations under one roof, along with two distinct streaming services: HBO Max and Paramount+.

There’s always been the looming question of what Paramount was going to do with HBO Max once the merger was complete, and now, its fate is much clearer.

In a press release outlining the details of the completed acquisition, Skydance confirmed plans to eventually merge its “direct-to-consumer streaming products,” HBO Max and Paramount+, into a single unified streaming service (via The Verge).

The asterisk here is that Skydance says this will happen “over time,” rather than immediately.

Beyond that, Skydance hasn’t yet announced what its new unified streaming service will be called or when it will launch.

Skydance is chasing Netflix

HBO Max and Paramount+ combined would still have fewer subscribers than Netflix

Hearing that HBO Max and Paramount+ are merging may not be all that surprising, as back in March, Skydance CEO David Ellison hinted at the idea during an investor call, saying that merging Paramount+ and HBO Max would give the combined streaming service “a little over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers.”

With more than 200 million subscribers, the combined service would be one of the biggest streaming platforms on the planet, though it would still trail Netflix, which last reported more than 325 million subscribers in January.

Beyond outlining its plan to unify the two streaming platforms, Skydance hasn’t said much else about what it has in store for them, other than promising “significant improvements.” The merger will likely be led by HBO CEO Casey Bloys, now Skydance’s chief content officer for streaming.

Just last week, Bloys didn’t comment on the potential merger of Paramount+ and HBO Max, but he did point to the success of its HBO Max-Disney+ bundle, which he said “has been very successful,” and added that a Paramount+ and HBO Max bundle “would make a lot of sense” (via The Hollywood Reporter). With that in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised if Skydance soon decides to offer a Paramount+ and HBO Max bundle while it works on unifying the services.

Price will be a big concern

Streaming is already too expensive

While I have a lot of concerns about this merger deal, especially given how consolidated Hollywood has become, my biggest concerns about HBO Max and Paramount+ unifying are the potential cost and what it’s going to be named.

HBO Max is already $23/month for its ad-free 4K UHD and Dolby Atmos plan, and Paramount+ Premium, its 4K ad-free plan, is $13/month, so I’d hate to see the price increase beyond HBO Max’s current monthly price. But given that the cost of streaming only seems to keep going up, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a unified HBO Max and Paramount+ cost over $25/month for 4K ad-free streaming. Netflix already charges $27/month for 4K ad-free streaming, so Skydance could undercut them slightly or even charge the same.

The name could also be weird. I just hope that, whatever Skydance’s boardroom of naming experts comes up with, they retain the HBO name in some way. Warner Bros. already learned that the hard way when they dropped HBO from HBO Max back in 2023, only to add it back in 2025.

Ultimately, there’s no timeline yet for when Paramount+ and HBO Max will unify into one, so for the near future, the status quo will likely remain. But be prepared for the possibility that HBO Max could be folded into Paramount+ in the not-so-distant future.