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Fans will be able to check back into “White Lotus” in February, according to Warner Bros. Discovery global streaming chief JB Perrette.
The exec revealed the news Tuesday during a tech and media conference hosted by Wells Fargo, along with HBO‘s planned spring 2025 premiere for “The Last of Us” Season 2, a late 2025 launch for “Game of Thrones” prequel “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” and an anticipated 2026 debut for “Euphoria” Season 3. (While Perrette said “Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” would be coming in the summer, Variety has learned it’s more likely going to be a fourth-quarter title.)
Additionally, Perrette indicated that HBO’s upcoming “Harry Potter” TV series, which was previously targeting a 2026 launch and is currently in the casting stage for its new Harry, Ron and Hermione, will instead come in 2027: “As you look at ’26 and into ’27, you begin a 10-year journey on the ‘Harry Potter’ series, which we’re super excited about. And I’d argue, may be the biggest event by the time we get to that series.”
Perrette, the president and CEO of global streaming and games at Warner Bros. Discovery, said that Max will begin cracking down on password sharing in earnest this month with “some very early, gentle messaging.”
Popular on Variety “This is an art and a science of trying to figure out who is actually sharing versus who may be actually at their vacation home or on a business trip, and so it’s an art and a science,” Perrette said. “We will offer a way to essentially add a member, starting in the first quarter. We will then start gradually as we get the data and start figuring out, with some explicit and implicit signals, how good we are at detecting. And then as we go through ’25, you’re going to see the filters get tighter and tighter.”
Max is currently priced at $16.99 for its ad-free tier ($9.99 with ads, and $20.99 for the “ultimate” ad-free version), which Perrette says will increase in the future, though he did not give a timeline for the next bump or how much it would be: “Obviously, we continue to be a driver of price. Naturally, with Max and with HBO as a content category and a brand, we want to be at the premium end of the pricing. And so we want to continue to push price as we go as well.”
