HBO Max Announces Big Comedy Grab: South Park, Rick and Morty, Schumer, Stand Up and Movies

HBO Max unveiled some big new plans in the comedy-verse on Tuesday with their official launch announcement. The new subscription based streaming platform made big headlines after securing rights to stream two major animated series- South Park and Rick and Morty.

The new platform, which launches in May 2020, will offer exclusive streaming of every episode of South Park (including new episodes within 24 hours of debuting on Comedy Central). The series currently streams on Hulu. The deal is believed to be worth over $500 million.

HBO Max also grabbed a non-exclusive streaming deal for Rick and Morty episodes, which will remain available on Hulu.

Max also intends to stream other comedy series including Friends, Big Bang Theory, Ellen’s Game of Games,
Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Impractical Jokers, CNN’s The History of Comedy, and W. Kamau Bell’s United Shades of America
.

No streaming service is worth much without original stand up comedy content, and HBO Max isn’t planning to be left behind in that growing market. Conan O’Brien will select and present five comedy specials on the platform. He’ll host two of the specials which will be showcase style. The remaining three specials will be hours spotlighting comedians O’Brien selects. Conan’s Team Coco is also producing a fifth hour with comedian James Veitch.

Previously announced, new cartoons and classic cartoons from Warner Brothers properties Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, and Hanna Barbara, and Robert Zemeckis will be behind a hybrid animated and live action comedy called Tooned Out.

Mindy Kaling’s upcoming original series College Girls will join the platform as a Max Original, and Elizabeth Banks is developing a high school super hero comedy based in the DC prequel universe, while Issa Rae is working on a comedy about a female hip hop group.

Movies will be a part of the platform- including a few originals like Gina Rodriguez’s Bobbie Sue about a lawyer who snags a case that could make her career only to discover that she’s the Johnny Bravo of lawyering (check your Brady Bunch references for that one). Melissa McCarthy will star in Ben Falcone’s Superintelligence, and an Amy Schumer documentary will premiere on HBO MAX documenting her complicated pregnancy, with a behind the scenes look at everything including her preparations for her comedy special while pregnant.

HBO Max makes its world premiere in May 2020.

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