HBO Max Subscriptions Are 40% Off For House of the Dragon

HBO Max has been all over the news lately. Since shelving the Batgirl movie earlier this month, Warner Bros. Discovery has been going on a cost-cutting and restructuring rampage that has included layoffs and tons of cancelled shows. At this point, you might be wondering whether or not you should cancel your subscription. Perhaps you already have. Maybe you were thinking about subscribing to watch the House of the Dragon Game of Thrones prequel series but the shakeup at HBO Max has put you off. If this is the case, Warner Bros. Discovery is hoping that you will weather the storm with a discount deal that offers as much as 40% off a subscription if you pre-pay for a full year. 

The discount offer is open to new and returning HBO Max customers who pre-pay for a year by subscribing to either the HBO Max Ad Free yearly plan at a discounted rate of $104.99 for the first year (versus $179.88 per year on the monthly plan or $149.99 yearly pre-paid) or the HBO Max With Ads yearly plan at a discounted rate of $69.99 for the first year (versus $119.88 per year on the monthly plan or $99.99 yearly pre-paid). You can take advantage of this offer here at HBO Max until October 30th. After the year is up, the price will renew at $149.99 (Ad Free) and $99.99 (With Ads) unless you cancel. 

Note that the fine print doesn't appear to put any time restrictions on returning HBO Max customers, so it seems as though you can score the deal if you cancel and resubscribe. 

The $104.99 Ad Free HBO Max deal works out to around $8.80 per month, which might be worth it if you're looking to check out House of the Dragon and other tentpole shows like Peacemaker, Penguin, Green Lantern Corps, and the Dune spinoff that are heading to HBO Max in the near future. For what it's worth, it seems as though Warner Bros. Discovery is looking to trim the fat and provide a higher quality experience moving forward: 

"Quality is what matters. Quality is what Casey [Bloys, HBO Max Chief Content Officer] and that team is delivering. It's the best team in the business. We're doubling down on that HBO team," Zaslav assured investors during WBD's earnings call. "They're all committed under contract and we're going to spend dramatically more this year and next year than we spent last year in the year before."

House of the Dragon appears to meet those quality standards. In our review, Jamie Lovett called it "a welcome return to Westeros". He writes: 

"I thought myself done with Game of Thrones, and I hardly think I'm the only one. Between the clumsily executed final season of the HBO series and the seemingly endless wait for The Winds of Winter, I was content to leave George R.R. Martin's fantasy universe -- which I had once been mildly obsessed with -- behind for good. I may even have been subconsciously rooting for House of the Dragon -- HBO's first Game of Thrones spinoff -- to fail that, I might not have to become reinvested in that world. I hadn't even finished watching the first episode of House of the Dragon before I realized that was no longer the case. All it took was one shot of a dragon gliding over King's Landing backed by Ramin Djawadi's score to hook me. By the end of the episode, I was again under Westeros' spell."