The best HBO Max originals and where to watch them

polygon.com:

HBO Max has undergone a lot of changes in the two-ish years since it launched in May 2020. At launch, the service struggled to distinguish itself for many consumers from HBO (an understandable point of confusion), and it’s been a long road to its current status as one of the better streaming libraries available.

In 2021, all Warner Bros. movies premiered on HBO Max on the same day as their theatrical debut. That changed in 2022 to a 45-day window — movies like The Batman needed to wait at least 45 days before coming to the streaming platform.

Now, even more changes are on the way. One of the first signs was the cancellation of the in-progress Batgirl movie, which was slated to be an HBO Max original. After Warner Bros. merged with Discovery, new CEO David Zaslav has made it very clear he wants to deemphasize scripted content that goes straight to streaming, leaning instead on non-scripted programming like reality television (something Discovery makes a lot of) for streaming services and instead going for big theatrical projects for scripted movies.

That’s also meant quite a few HBO Max originals have been removed from the service to reduce costs (even though they are HBO Max originals, they still have licensing fees to remain on the platform). But unlike Netflix, HBO Max does not restrict those originals to only their platform. Fortunately, even after being removed from HBO Max, they are available to watch elsewhere, through digital rental or other means. For contrast, when Netflix removes original programming (which is a thing they do!), it is straight up gone.

That’s where we come in! We’ve collected our favorite HBO Max original movies and series, as well as where you can watch them now. This does not include HBO