If the government gives its approval for Paramount Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, then two streaming apps will also become one.

Paramount CEO David Ellison told those on a conference call on Monday that Paramount+ will be combined with HBO Max to form one streaming service, CNBC reported.

The single platform could have about 200 million subscribers, Ellison estimated.

Ellison, who spoke after last week’s bidding war between Paramount Skydance and Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery, came to an end with Netflix backing out, and Paramount the victor, pending regulator approval.

Paramount Skydance expects to close the deal by the end of the third quarter this year, according to Bloomberg.

But he said that despite the probable combining of the streaming platforms, “HBO should stay HBO” because of its quality programming.

He also said that he wants the HBO brand to “operate with independence,” Variety reported.

CNBC surmised that HBO would likely be a sub-brand in a larger platform.

“As we said, we do plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers,” Ellison said, according to Variety. “We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space. At Paramount, by the middle of this year, we’ll have completed the consolidation of our three services under one unified stack, and you can see us taking a similar approach to this platform going forward. And we think the combined offering, and given the amount of content and what we can do from the tech side, really will put us in a position to be able to compete with the most scaled players in DTC.”

The Hollywood Reporter explained that the three services mentioned above are Paramount+, the FAST platform Pluto TV and BET.

The move to bring it all under one streaming platform would be a challenge to Netflix, Bloomberg reported.

©2026 Cox Media Group