HBO’s White Lotus, House of the Dragon to find new streaming home in Australia

A new streaming service will launch in Australia next year when US subscription platform Max launches as home to the likes of House of the Dragon, White Lotus and Succession, hit shows that until now have been part of Foxtel’s exclusive deal with HBO parent Warner Bros Discovery.

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley Investor Conference last week in San Francisco, global head of streaming and games at Warner Bros Discovery Jean-Briac Perrette said Max can quickly become one of the top three streaming services in markets such as Australia amid its global rollout.

HBO series such as House of the Dragon, White Lotus will find a new streaming home in Australia next year.Credit: HBO

“If you think about other markets, like the two big Anglo markets, UK and Australia, our content travels extremely well. We know how well our content does on both existing legacy platforms, and it drives a significant amount of the viewership,” Perrette said.

“So the demand is there, and there’s unquestionably easy access because, ultimately, we don’t have a huge amount of local originals we have to invest in. There’s not a lot of other costs. And so those are markets where we are very confident [...] of being successful in a relatively short period of time.”

Perrette said the company would “be crazy not to do it” as it was already “leaving money on the table” with its current license deals.

The comments are the strongest confirmation of the platform’s imminent launch in Australia to date. While Warner Bros declined to comment further on the specifics, multiple sources familiar with the plans, speaking anonymously for confidentially reasons, said it could be expected as early as the first three months of 2025, to coincide with a packed content schedule.

Max will be competing in Australia with the likes of Netflix, Binge, Disney+ and Stan, which is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.

Following the merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery in 2022, Max was formed as a combination of its HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming services, seeking to catch up with Hollywood studios’ digital platforms and Netflix.

Having launched in the United States, Warner Bros is now rolling out Max globally. It started operating in 39 markets in Latin America last month, and is now turning its attention to Europe ahead of the Paris Olympics, for which it has the broadcast rights across the continent via its Eurosport brand.

Following a light content slate, caused in part by last year’s Hollywood actors and screenwriters’ strikes, Perrette touted the company’s new program pipeline as one of the reasons it would be a global success.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and president, global streaming and games Jean-Briac Perrette in 2023.

“When we look at the next 12, 18, 24 months, we have all of our four biggest HBO tent poles; House of the Dragon season 2 coming in June, next year we’ll have The Last of Us season two, Euphoria season three; White Lotus season three,” he said, paired with a new Dune series, as well as a series on Batman villain The Penguin.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Max would enter Australia, among other markets within 18 months.

Its launch has been hotly anticipated by the local market since Foxtel signed a ‘multi-year’ deal with Warner Bros in early 2023, with HBO’s biggest shows having been crucial to its streaming service Binge’s early subscriber growth.

Binge has now 1.47 million subscribers, according to News Corp’s most recent financial results, with growth stagnating over the past year. Losing the blockbuster shows could be a major blow for the business.

Seeking to reduce its dependence on increasingly volatile subscriber numbers in the cost-of-living crisis, Foxtel this month launched streaming aggregation hardware Hubbl, which bundles services such as Netflix and Disney+ with free-to-air television in a single user platform. The launch may not be the end of a partnership between Warner Bros and Foxtel, however, with Perrette hinting at the potential for partnership deals to help Max find scale, which could include Hubbl.

A Foxtel spokesperson said that “as we said at the time we announced the deal, we continue our long-standing partnership with optionality at its core. A unique business model like ours that covers multiple platforms and brands means we can partner for the long term.”

One potential hurdle for Max could be the looming introduction of local content quotas for streaming services, which the Labor government intends to implement by July 1. Media and studio executives have not been given any details on when the legislation will be introduced to the lower house, with just 15 parliamentary sitting days between now and the self-imposed deadline in July.

The new legislation might not apply to the new market entrant, at least not in its infancy: A government document outlining two potential models for the legislation shared in December said a service with fewer than 1 million subscribers would face no obligation to produce Australian content.

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