Skydance Sets a Date for Its HBO Max and Paramount+ Team-Up

Streaming fans have spent the past year bracing for a Hollywood merger that seemed to change shape every few months. When the dust settled, the combined company brought together the Warner Bros. and Paramount studios, the CBS broadcast network, CNN and a long list of cable channels under the Skydance name, led by CEO David Ellison and Co-CEO Ynon Kreiz.

The sheer size of the new empire has left plenty of subscribers wondering what it means for their monthly bills. The company now counts more than 200 million streaming subscribers across Paramount+, HBO Max, discovery+ and Pluto TV, with a presence in more than 100 countries and territories. That is a lot of logos to juggle, and the question of what happens to them has hung over the industry ever since the deal closed.

Now Variety is reporting that Skydance has a timeline. The company plans to launch a subscription bundle combining Paramount+ and HBO Max in early 2027, following its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery last month. The announcement came alongside the company’s third-quarter earnings, which also laid out cost-cutting plans.

The bundle is being pitched as a first step rather than the finish line. The plans call for an eventual unification of the combined company’s direct-to-consumer streamers into a single service. In other words, subscribers will likely get a shared package first, with a true merger of the platforms coming later.

Plenty of details are still missing. Skydance has not said how much the bundle will cost or whether it will include ad-supported options, even though both services currently offer cheaper tiers with ads as well as premium ad-free plans. For a company that wants to sell this as a better value, the price will be the number everyone is watching.

The overlap between the two audiences may be the reason for the cautious rollout. Antenna estimates that 7.5 million U.S. subscribers already pay for both HBO Max and Paramount+, which is 26.7% of HBO Max’s U.S. subscribers and 21.9% of Paramount+’s. Folding the two together will probably cost the company some of those double-dippers, a trade-off the bundle may be designed to soften.

Branding is the other open question. HBO Max accounts for nearly double the share of subscribers that Paramount+ does, which could shape the name of the eventual hybrid, and some of the HBO Max name could live on. Warner Bros. Discovery once tried to drop the HBO label entirely, so a reversal would be a notable twist.

The content on offer is strong enough to carry the pitch. Season 3 of ‘The Pitt’ is well underway and set for an early 2027 release, and ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ has wrapped shooting on its second season and is slated to begin rolling out episodes in early 2027. Meanwhile, the biggest forthcoming piece of TV for Warner Bros. is its ‘Harry Potter’ reboot, with Season 1 premiering at Christmas on HBO Max and Season 2 already shooting.

The movie side is just as busy. Next year, the combined studios could have some 36 releases, including a Superman sequel, a ‘Minecraft’ movie sequel and ‘A Quiet Place Part III.’ The company has also made a commitment here, as Paramount agreed in its settlement to deliver a minimum of 30 theatrical films per year.

For viewers, the early 2027 window leaves a few months of uncertainty before the bundle arrives. The pricing, the ad tiers and the eventual name of a single platform are all still to be answered. Skydance has shown it intends to bring its biggest franchises under one roof, and the next announcement will reveal what that costs.