Skydance closed its $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, and the closing announcement answered the question HBO Max and Paramount+ subscribers have been asking for months. According to Skydance's October 6 release, the company's streaming products "will unify into a single service over time." As Engadget and Ars Technica point out, that covers Discovery+ too, so three apps are eventually headed into one.
That's a step further than the signals we had a day earlier. In our October 5 look at the deal, the clues pointed toward a bundle of two separate apps, because nobody had committed to a merged service. The release settles the direction, but it leaves out almost everything you'd want to know as a subscriber. There is no name for the combined service, no launch date and no price, which The Verge also notes. For now the apps stay separate, so you still need both subscriptions to get the whole catalog, as How-To Geek explains.
What the release actually commits to
Reading the full release turns up a few details that matter more to viewers than the merger headline. Skydance says it has "200+ million streaming subscribers across platforms," promises at least 30 theatrical films a year, each with a minimum 45-day run in theaters before it can move on, and says it will keep licensing its shows to other companies. It is also targeting more than $6 billion in yearly cost savings within three years, mostly from "technology, integration and procurement, marketing and real estate." Running one streaming platform instead of three is an obvious place to find some of that technology savings, although the release doesn't say how much of the $6 billion streaming accounts for.
The subscriber number is worth a quick sanity check. Netflix last reported 325 million members in January, so even a clean 200 million would leave Skydance's combined service at about 62% of Netflix's size (200 ÷ 325). Paramount's own Q2 letter put Paramount+ at 81.6 million, which suggests HBO Max and Discovery+ make up most of the rest, though "across platforms" may count some overlap between services.
What the three services cost today
Here's what you'd pay in the US if you subscribed to all three separately right now, using HBO Max's help center, Paramount+'s published plans and the discovery+ help center.
| Tier | HBO Max | Paramount+ | Discovery+ | All three |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| With ads | $10.99 | $8.99 | $5.99 | $25.97 |
| Ad-free | $18.49 | $13.99 | $9.99 | $42.47 |
Nobody should expect one app to cost $42.47 a month, but don't expect it to cost the same as HBO Max alone either. Engadget points to the debt Skydance took on and says a higher price than before is a real possibility, and Ars makes a similar point that a unified library doesn't automatically mean a cheaper one. A merged service would most likely land somewhere between today's single-app price and the three-app total, and where it lands is the number to watch.
How we got here
This is the second time in three years that Warner's streaming business has absorbed another library. Discovery launched Discovery+ in 2021, merged with WarnerMedia in 2022, and in 2023 HBO Max relaunched as Max with Discovery's reality and documentary shows folded in, before the company went back to the HBO Max name in 2025. Skydance closed its purchase of Paramount in August 2025. Late that year Netflix agreed to buy WBD, then dropped the deal in February 2026, and Paramount signed its own $110 billion agreement on February 27. In March, David Ellison told investors that combining Paramount+ and HBO Max would give the company "a little over 200 million" subscribers, and a multistate lawsuit that briefly held up the deal was settled in late September before Tuesday's close.
What you should do
Our view: you don't need to change anything this week. Your apps, logins and prices are the same as they were on Monday, and there's no date for the switch. If you pay month to month, that flexibility is worth keeping until Skydance names a price. If you were about to lock in an annual plan on any of the three, waiting a little longer seems sensible. And if you pay for both HBO Max and Discovery+, take a look at whether the shows you watch are already on HBO Max, since it has carried much of Discovery's catalog since the 2023 relaunch, and you might be able to drop one subscription before any of this happens.
Sources: Skydance, The Verge, Engadget, Ars Technica, How-To Geek, HBO Max and discovery+ help centers.