Max to Test Out Weird News Alert Feature

Over the course of the past year or so, Max has found itself as the butt of many jokes. First came Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s infamous scripted programming versus unscripted programming presentation, then came a slew of cancellations of already-finished films in an attempt to save a bit of money through tax write-offs. Now, it looks like the platform may be testing a way to eventually run the equivalency of pop-up ads through the service as well.

Wednesday, one Max official revealed the testing of a new feature (via Variety) that’ll alert viewers of breaking news, even if they aren’t watching the platform’s 24/7 CNN Max live-stream. It’s unclear when and where the testing will start but naturally, it has subscribers already anticipating the leap to ads appearing during streaming even on top of commercial breaks.

Why was Batgirl canceled?

Even though Batgirl was deep in post-production, Warner Bros. Discovery opted to not release the final project as a way to claim the film as a loss.

“Our ambition is to bring Warners back and to produce great high quality films, and as we look at the opportunities that we have broadly, DC is one of the top of the list for us,” Zaslav explained earlier this year. “You look at Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman — these are brands that are known everywhere in the world. The ability to drive those all over the world with great story is a big opportunity for us. We have done a reset. We’ve restructured the business. We’re going to focus. There will be a team with a 10-year plan focusing just on DC. It’s very similar to the structure that Alan Horn and and Bob Iger put together, very effectively, with Kevin Feige at Disney. We think that we could build a long-term much stronger, sustainable growth business out of DC. And as part of that, we’re going to focus on quality. We’re not going to release any film before it’s ready. We’re not going to release a film to make quarter. The focus is going to be — how do we make each of these films, in general, as good as possible? DC is something that we think we could make better, and we’re focused on it now. We have some great DC films coming up — Black Adam, Shazam!, and The Flash. We’re working on all of those. we’re very excited about them.”