Inside HBO Max's scramble to launch a massive bet on streaming

Pairing Tony Soprano with Elmo and Chandler Bing was always going to be tricky.

Would the murderous mob boss befriend a red Muppet? Forget about it. Nor would Tony Soprano have much patience for the wiseguy antics of Chandler Bing, the neighbor from "Friends."

Yet here they are, pillars of a new streaming service, HBO Max, that rolls out Wednesday. Ever since telecommunications giant AT&T bought Time Warner nearly two years ago and renamed the company WarnerMedia, executives have been building toward this event. HBO Max's launch will be a watershed moment as a major Hollywood player for nearly a century attempts a high-wire pivot into a new media powerhouse.

But in figuring out how to market HBO Max, WarnerMedia executives confronted inherent conflicts. There are already three other HBO-branded products: HBO, the premium television channel; HBO Go, an app for subscribers to watch shows on the go; and HBO Now, a stand-alone service dedicated to the network's signature programming. How do you make the fourth, and possibly the grandest, iteration stand out, particularly in a pandemic?

To lure new customers, the company has long envisioned combining its signature HBO programs, such as "Game of Thrones," "The Sopranos" and "Succession," with more commercially oriented original shows and the deep Warner Bros. library of TV hits, cartoons and movies.

But the supermarket approach to HBO, which for years has operated as an island of excellence and sophistication,