It’s now just Max: all of the news from Warner Bros. Discovery’s reveal event

Max, the successor to HBO Max, might be getting a little more serious about 4K content. At an event today, Warner Bros. Discovery detailed its plans for the new app, including how the migration of accounts will work and what kind of new content will be appearing on the service. The company also announced an additional paid tier for $19.99 that will allow for more concurrent streams and 4K. It better not mess this up.

The first two tiers will keep their current prices. For $9.99, you’ll get two concurrent ad-supported streams at HD quality. For $15.99, you’ll lose the ads and be allowed to download up to 30 pieces of content at a time, but you’ll no longer get access to 4K. Finally, for $19.99, you’ll get 4K with HDR and Dolby Atmos, four concurrent streams, and up to 100 downloads.

The Game of Thrones franchise is getting a new entry on Warner Bros. Discovery’s newly-announced Max streaming service. The new prequel, called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: the Hedge Knight, has been rumored for some time, but it wasn’t clear which part of the ample Game of Thrones lore it would borrow from.

At today’s HBO Max rebranding event, HBO head Casey Bloys confirmed that the new show has been ordered straight to series and would focus on Dunk and Egg. In the world of Game of Thrones, Dunk is a famous knight, and Egg is his squire, both of whom travel the land righting wrongs.

While it was clearly in development long before Duolingo’s very funny and compelling April Fools’ joke, Love & Translation is definitely going to get a lot of comparisons to the viral ad. That’s because they’re basically the same thing.

In the new show, three men who only speak English look for love amongst 12 women who don’t speak any English at all, which is… a little cringier than the Duolingo gag. Also, there’s no green owl looming in the distance and trying to teach people to new languages so they can better communicate.

In Matt Reeves’ The Batman, Oswald Cobblepot was still just a two-bit criminal working for other, bigger crime lords who kept Gotham PD on their toes. But in the first teaser trailer for Max’s upcoming Penguin spinoff series starring Colin Farrell, Cobblepot’s well on his way to making it in the big leagues (of villainy).

Though the Batman himself doesn’t make an appearance in The Penguin’s new teaser revealed today during the official unveiling of Max, it’s clear from all the back alley dealings and shootouts that Cobblepot’s getting into that Gotham’s as seedy as ever and still a hotbed for criminal activity. Because of all the chaos, it seems very much like Gotham’s in one of its more lawless phases, where even the city’s worst villains live in a constant state of fear that they won’t live to see the next day. But in that chaos, Penguin seems to sense an opportunity to secure true greatness for himself.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s revamped subscription service is just called “Max,” and the company explained why it dropped the HBO branding at a press event on Wednesday. A key reason was to help Warner Bros. Discovery broaden the appeal of the app so that it’s not mostly targeted at content for adults.

“We want [Max] to be welcoming to all and easily recognizable, including to a key customer segment, kids and families,” JB Perrette, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery’s global streaming and games, said at the event. “We all love HBO. And it’s a brand that has been built over five decades to be the edgy, groundbreaking trendsetter in entertainment for adults. But it’s not exactly where parents would most eagerly drop off their kids.”

The time has come: HBO Max and Discovery Plus are merging to create a combined streaming service called “Max.” During an event Wednesday, Warner Bros. Discovery announced the new service will launch on May 23rd and cost up to $19.99 per month with two cheaper tiers priced at $15.99 and $9.99.

“Max is the one to watch,” CEO David Zaslav said. “It’s the one to watch because it’s the place every member of the household can go to see exactly what they want at any given time.”

What’s the best streaming service? It feels like a big and important question to answer. It’s also a completely impossible, completely subjective question that depends on everything from your budget to your favorite Mission: Impossible movie. The streaming market is a teeming mass of stuff, with various platforms rising and falling, and nothing ever stays the same for very long.

But here at The Verge, we like answers. So, for this episode of The Vergecast, we decided to answer that big question the only way we know how: chaotically and at great length. So we held the first annual Vergecast Streaming Services Draft, in which our three co-hosts each drafted their top five streaming services. There were surprises from the very beginning, lots of arguments throughout, and definitely no condoning of piracy. We would never.

HBO started as an experiment. It was a way to get people to switch from getting TV over broadcast antennas to cable by offering events you’d otherwise need tickets to see: sports, plays, movies. That’s where the name Home Box Office comes from.

But it grew from there in surprising ways: HBO was a major innovator in satellite distribution, in working with cable operators around the country, and of course in programming. The company’s taste and style have influenced and shaped culture for a generation now. And importantly, HBO did it without any real data: the cable companies owned all the subscribers, so HBO made decisions through instinct and experience.

When HBO Max and Discovery Plus merge into a single app next spring, the new platform will simply be called “Max.” That’s according to a report from CNBC, which notes that while a final decision hasn’t been made, Max “is the likely choice” and is being vetted by Warner Bros. Discovery’s legal team. The lawyers are also mulling over other potential names, according to the report, and the combined streaming service has been given the codename “BEAM” internally.

The reasoning for the “Max” name is simple: Warner Bros. Discovery wants HBO to fit into its huge stable of content without overshadowing programming from Discovery, DC Comics, Warner Bros., CNN, and more. CNBC’s report says the new platform will borrow ideas from Disney Plus and organize Warner Bros. Discovery properties into different “hubs” in the same way that Disney separates Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and so on.

Along with making Warner Bros. Discovery a less-diverse place overall, CEO David Zaslav’s latest bit of corporate restructuring is probably going to gut Cartoon Network and turn it into a shadow of its former self.

For understandable reasons, Warner Bros. Discovery’s move to fire 82 employees and eliminate 43 open positions from its Television division grabbed headlines when news of the decision broke earlier this week. But the implications of the company’s plan to merge Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network Studios may be much larger than what Warner Bros. Television CEO Channing Dungey recently implied in a company-wide internal memo.

The parents of HBO Max and Discovery Plus have officially completed their merger, allowing WarnerMedia and Discovery to build what the companies have said will be “the most differentiated content portfolio in the world.”

Investors today approved the multibillion-dollar deal that will allow AT&T, WarnerMedia’s current owner, to offload its content powerhouse to Discovery and form a new business under the name Warner Bros. Discovery. This new business, the companies said last year, “will be able to invest in more original content for its streaming services, enhance the programming options across its global linear pay TV and broadcast channels, and offer more innovative video experiences and consumer choices.”