You won't have to wait long to see the fruits of the new production wing's labor when the first Warner Max movies are due to arrive in 2020. The involved companies haven't said which one will be first out of the gate.

There's not much mystery to the strategy. Ideally, this lands HBO Max the occasional Bird Box-like hit without having to invest massive amounts of cash or risk cannibalizing Warner Bros.' theatrical releases. The problem, of course, is that competitors won't necessarily hold back. Netflix is believed to have spent upward of $130 million on a heist movie with Dwayne Johnson and Gal Godot, for example. Streaming giants like these may have no qualms about outspending HBO Max, in part because they don't have a conventional movie business they want to protect.