AT&T CEO John Stankey asserted that the release of Warner Bros.’s full 2021 movie slate on HBO Max and in theaters at the same time will be a “win-win-win” — for WarnerMedia, consumers and partners.
Stankey acknowledged criticism that AT&T and WarnerMedia have faced from theater owners: “I know there’s a lot of noise out in the market, people with different viewpoints.” He added, “Anytime you’re going to change a model, it’s going to create a degree of noise.”
But the AT&T chief, speaking Tuesday at the UBS Global TMT Virtual Conference, said that in light of the ongoing COVID pandemic and the unwillingness of consumers to go to theaters, WarnerMedia needed to find the best way to monetize the movie slate.
“We knew we needed to try something different,” Stankey said. And, he said, “We think it’s a great way to penetrate the market faster” with HBO Max.
Stankey said HBO Max has gained 4 million activations in the past two months, to stand at nearly 12.6 million (up from 8.6 million at the end of Q3). In the last 30 days, he said the number of hours HBO Max customers spend watching the service has increased about 36%.
Last week WarnerMedia stunned Hollywood in announcing that Warner Bros.’ current 17-movie slate for 2021 will hit HBO Max day-and-date with theaters. That came after the WB’s “Wonder Woman 1984” was already set to hit HBO Max and theaters simultaneously on Dec. 25.
“The question was, what’s best to deal with that asset? Our feeling is, there’s a win-win-win here,” Stankey said. “In our case we had a fair amount of content in the pipeline” and was facing “an inability to take that product out to consumers.”
What WarnerMedia did not want to do was sell Warner Bros.’ movies to competing streaming platforms: “From our perspective, going and giving those to significant competitors is probably not the most intelligent tway to deal with that.”
Stankey added that the company We think getting the product out in the market in a staged way is important – snowplowing content into the back half of 2021 doesn’t make sense. Smoothing that out is frankly in the best interstes of not only us but those who create the product.
“It’s to give customers choice,” Stankey said. “it’s to allow the industry to have this transitional moment.”