Huge changes at WBD were biggest story of the year for HBO Max
Huge changes at WBD were biggest story of the year for HBO Max
The company announced plans to spin its cable channels off from its streaming and studio business in 2025, and that was just the beginning of WBD’s evolution.
Now that the holidays have arrived, it’s the perfect time to consider the biggest stories of 2025 — and what they might portend for 2026. Perhaps no company in media had a bigger year than Warner Bros. Discovery, and the decision to change the name of its streaming service Max back to HBO Max was, as it turned out, the tip of the iceberg for the company.
The year past was a huge year of change and evolution for Warner Bros. Discovery, which is likely to look very different in 2026, one way or another. Not only has WBD decided to split itself into component parts in the coming months, but it also appears that one of those parts has been sold to the biggest streaming service of them all.
WBD got the ball rolling in June, when it announced that it intended to split into two companies, with the studios and streaming segment to continue being led by current company CEO David Zaslav. The new entity, Discovery Global, would control WBD’s cable channels and would be helmed by WBD’s chief financial officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels.
HBO Max will, of course, stay with the company’s studio and streaming assets under the new arrangement. The split is intended to be finished by 2026, and follows a recommendation from a Bank of America analyst that it pursue such a move to help secure its future.
In the months following that announcement, chatter began to increase that WBD’s assets could be on the market, despite the fact that its intended division had not yet been completed. Just weeks after completing its own merger, Paramount Skydance cast an acquisitive eye on WBD and news broke that it intended to make an official acquisition bid for the company.
That decision set off a bidding war for WBD drew the attention of Netflix and Comcast in addition to Paramount. Multiple rounds of bidding ensued, but in the end, it was Netflix that walked away winner, with an offer carrying an enterprise value of nearly $83 billion.
That deal isn’t closed just yet, as it will have to survive regulator scrutiny and a hostile takeover attempt from Paramount. The story will spill over into the new year without a doubt, but there’s also no denying it was the biggest piece of news generated by HBO Max’s parent company in 2025 as well.
HBO Max
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