At Deadline Towers at least, there had been real anticipation about Gerhard Zeiler‘s Monday Morning Media Mastermind address. Appearing alongside EMEA streaming chief Leah Hooper Rosa, the Warner Bros. Discovery President of International came into his talk off the back of a series of top-levels management departures and with the industry itching to learn when they could expect Max to replace HBO Max internationally. Zeiler dealt with the second point in detail but not the first. He revealed 22 Max launches in Europe next year (these territories already have HBO Max) along with a second wave later in 2024 that will include France and Belgium. Zeiler also touched on synergies. When Warner Bros and Discovery merged, David Zaslav talked about $3B in savings through synergies, and though the company has faced huge criticism for thousands of redundancies, yanking shows off of streamers and cancelling film releases to service that strategy, the figure has steadily risen. Zeiler, somewhat provocatively, revealed the $3B figure was now “on the way” to $5B, adding: “Who knows where we will end up?” However, there was nothing was said on the exits of Priya Dogra, Robert Blair and others in Europe, which was somewhat surprising given the high-profile nature of these departures.
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