HBO Max is now officially just Max. As many have joked on Twitter, making a reference to Justin Timberlake’s character on “The Social Network,” “it’s cleaner.”
But the transition isn’t going very smoothly.
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First off, many long-time fans of HBO have long been taking issue with Warner Bros.-Discover (WBD) CEO David Zaslav’s budget cuts and what has been criticized as a tone-deaf approach to art. Those same critics find it baffling that the HBO name is now being dropped in favor of Max.
Social media was filled with complaints after the launch that their old logins did not work, and that they had to redownload the app, when it had previously been stressed by WBD this would be an automatic changeover.
But now that people have fired off their initial complaints, it's become apparent there’s a much bigger issue at play, one that may have implications for the ongoing Writers Guild strike.
Max Removes Writer, Director Credits
One nice feature on HBO Max, which has widely been emulated by other streaming services, is that if you click on a TV show or film, it lists the actors, writers, directors and other creatives involved. It was a way of acknowledging the work people put into art, and also saved fans a trip to IMDB when they wanted to figure out which recognizable character actor they have been enjoying.
But now writers and directors are just listed as “Creators” on films, and on television episodes, which are often written by staff members who are not the creators of the show. Though TV credits can be found under the pulldown for “Episode Details,” it's more work than it previously was.
Here is how the credits look for the 2002 film “Catch Me If You Can,” which was directed by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by Jeff Nathanson, based on a book of the same name by Frank Abagnale Jr.and Stan Redding.
As the screenwriter Eric Eidelstein noted, he is no longer given credit for a “Gossip Girl” episode he wrote.
This lack of credit comes as the Writers Guild of America is three weeks into a strike, as it negotiates with the studios and streaming platforms represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The strike is concerned with, amongst other issues, the use of AI in the creation of scripts, shrinking writers rooms and the changing nature of residuals in the streaming era. (Recently, Zaslav was met with boos and chants of “pay your writers” when giving a commencement speech at Boston University.)
The change is already provoking the ire of screenwriters, and has been accused by critics of being a retaliatory move.
"This 'creators' business was almost certainly a top-down order so as to retaliate against the strike, right?" one user conjectured.
Nora Zuckerman, a screenwriter and the showrunner for Peacock’s hit “Poker Face” has tagged the WGA, DGA and Producers Guild of America and questioned how Max thought the various guilds “would be even remotely okay” with the new system.
Update: the Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild of America have released the following statement in response to the Max's alteration to credits.
WGA West president Meredith Stiehm said, “Warner Bros has lumped writers, directors and producers into an invented, diminishing category they call ‘Creators.’ This is a credits violation for starters. But worse, it is disrespectful and insulting to the artists that make the films and TV shows that make their corporation billions.” She added, “This attempt to diminish writers’ contributions and importance echoes the message we heard in our negotiations with AMPTP — that writers are marginal, inessential, and should simply accept being paid less and less, while our employers’ profits go higher and higher. This tone-deaf disregard for writers’ importance is what brought us to where we are today — Day 22 of our strike.”
“For almost 90 years, the Directors Guild has fought fiercely to protect the credit and recognition deserved by directors for the work they create,” said DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter. “Warner Bros. Discovery’s unilateral move, without notice or consultation, to collapse directors, writers, producers and others into a generic category of ‘creators’ in their new Max rollout while we are in negotiations with them is a grave insult to our members and our union.”
A spokesperson for Max emailed The Street the following response:
“We agree that the talent behind the content on Max deserve their work to be properly recognized. We will correct the credits, which were altered due to an oversight in the technical transition from HBO Max to Max and we apologize for this mistake.”
