First-look at Max's new rebrand

Back in mid-February, we learned via a news story from Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg about an impending rebrand of Max. It is not a new name or anything as drastic as that, but a new color scheme and revised idents to match the new black & white visual style.

He wrote:

The blue color is going away and will be replaced by something more neutral, likely some combination of black and white. The color of the app’s name will change with the color of the show in marketing campaigns.

The plans aren’t final, but the company hired a new chief marketing officer — former Netflix executive Shauna Spenley — who is spearheading the rebrand. The main color of HBO was always black and white. Then it became purple with HBO Max and blue with Max. We’re going back to the original colors, but keeping the HBO name out of it.

Of course, this isn’t the first rebranding the service has done. Back in 2023, it rebranded itself from HBO Max to just Max, introducing the current blue color scheme (pivoting from a purple). At this time, they flooded the service with a whole lot of junk reality shows from Discovery and failed to include news or sports. I may have labelled the effort as “piss-weak” (a charming Australian turn of phrase I would never use in front of my mother).

The current brand identity of Max

Max has come a long way since then (though, it still over-emphasises reality programming more than it should). So, this rebrand, which is really just a visual spit & polish, is perfectly fine. And I like that they are embracing a more HBO-like visual approach to it all.

Several sources suggested to me that we will definitely see the new branding in place in Australia for it’s launch on March 31. With the service ramping up efforts, that new branding is already available to look at.

Here’s the Australian trailer for season 2 of The Last of Us:

You can see the new black version of the new Max logo on the top left-hand side. You could probably have just used your imagination, but you can see it in a larger format here:

There’s also the full-branding on display at the end of the trailer. It does look classy.

And on the Max Australia socials on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. There’s a few assets that are almost interesting (the promo video of Tony Soprano annoyed at his car radio playing TV show themes from Max shows is almost funny… but only if you don’t question it and just rely on that initial smirk it delivers).

There is one legitimately interesting brand asset that has been created for the local launch. It has a lovely elegance to the packing foam being vacuumed up to reveal the brand:

@streamonmaxauMax incoming. See ya March 31. Bye filler 👋

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Max launches in Australia on March 31 with the new branding. It is not clear when the new branding will be seen on the international Max services.

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The West Wing’s Janel Moloney is now on Substack

It’s lovely finding

Janel Moloney

from The West Wing has started a Substack (she plays your second favourite character and mine Donna Moss… obviously, there’s no debate that Toby is the best character…).

I’ve heard Moloney a few times being interviewed and she seems like she is a genuine delight as a person, so I was so very happy to stumble upon her writing over the weekend.

She’s just a few days into writing, but you can read a short essay from her on filming the first episode. This memory is incredibly charming, especially when you place it in the context of it being 1999 with Julianna Margulies as a huge star on TV’s biggest drama of the decade meeting Moloney, who was a day-player on a pilot with just a few lines.

But I remember her suede pants. Julianna Margulies, so glittery and famous, stopped in from ER, the massive hit she starred in and filmed on the soundstage next to ours. She sat talking to her friend, Brad Whitford, in the makeup room. It was my first day on the pilot. I was just a weekly player, quiet in the room, but already intent on staying forever. Julianna sat on the counter, stretched out in her creamy supple pants with a tiny bit of white skin exposed above her belt. I had my ten-year-old hatchback in the structure, my shift at the restaurant waiting for me that weekend, and I just wanted to be her. She took my hand and said I had pretty skin.

You can read her Substack entry here:

Hungry Girl

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The 1982 Diner TV series

I sense that the 1982 Barry Levinson film Diner, a huge influence on almost all of those incredibly talky 90s indie films (a genre that I love), is falling out of mainstream pop-cultural awareness. But, that’s probably to be expected after 43 years.

The film was about a bunch of young men in 1959 Baltimore hanging out at a diner through the night and into the morning. It starred Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Paul Reiser, Kevin Bacon, Timothy Daly, and Ellen Barkin.

Incredible cast. Great film. I expect many people reading this newsletter have likely seen it many times, or at least know of the film.

But, did you know that the year after the film came out, Barry Levinson wrote and directed a pilot for a Diner TV series at CBS which never went to series? An early-career Paul Reiser was the only cast member to come back for it, but James Spader was also in the TV show cast.

Levinson is starting to do some press for upcoming Warner Bros film The Alto Knights and was asked by Indiewire about the TV pilot:

“I’ve done various pilots over the years, and some get through, and some don’t,” he said. “‘Homicide’ got through, ‘Oz’ got through, but others never hit the screen.” Levinson takes some solace in a story he heard about CBS chairman Bill Paley admitting later that letting “Diner” die was a mistake. “Supposedly he said, ‘We should have picked that up.’ Is that for real, or did somebody make it up and tell me that? I don’t know, but I find it sort of amusing.”

It’s pretty rare that I ever hear anyone talking about this pilot, so it caught my interest. If you’re curious, the full show is up on YouTube:

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News Desk

• Netflix has announced With Love, Meghan has been renewed for a second season. This is because the show was commissioned for two seasons, with season 2 already filmed. Read: Variety

• SWAT has been cancelled by CBS (again). It will (probably) not return after it’s eighth season. Read: THR

• Andie McDowell Hallmark show The Way Home has been renewed for season four. Read: Deadline

• BBC’s Amandaland, a spin-off from Motherland, has been greenlit for a second season. Read: BBC

• The Summer I Turned Pretty will end after season three at Prime Video. Read: Variety

• James Cameron says that the third Avatar film is longer than the second (which was three hours and 12 mins). To which I say ‘Yes, please’. Read: Variety

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Trailer Park

The Studio debuts on Apple TV+ March 21.

Seth Rogen stars as the newly appointed head of a movie studio, Continental Studios. Desperate for the approval of celebrities, he and his team of executives at Continental Studios must juggle corporate demands with creative ambitions as they try to keep movies alive and relevant.

Paradis City is streaming now on Prime Video.

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That’s the newsletter for today.

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