If watching all four hours of Gone with the Wind at home seems too daunting, HBO Max may soon be able to help.
Warner Bros. Discovery announced Tuesday that “HBO Max Shorts” will present trailers, bonus material, and memorable scenes from the service’s library in a vertical feed similar to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
Scarlett and Rhett in Gone with the Wind – Warner Bros., YouTube
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Some film lovers may object, viewing the feature as a degradation of classic movies and an attempt to cater to shrinking attention spans. However, Warner Bros. hopes it will help subscribers discover content they might otherwise overlook.
Streaming Services Embrace Vertical Video
Users can access the feed through a new Shorts icon in the HBO Max app’s bottom navigation menu. The clips will be personalized using each subscriber’s viewing history. Viewers who find something interesting can immediately begin watching the full title or save it to “My List.”
The feature is initially being tested with select iOS users in the United States. Warner Bros. Discovery plans to introduce it across additional devices and markets before eventually incorporating sports content.
HBO Max is not the first streaming service to embrace short-form vertical video. In January, Disney announced that it would introduce the format on the Disney+ mobile and television apps. It also began producing original micro-dramas, called “verts,” through a series titled Locker Diaries.
Shot from Zombies: Locker Diaries, episode 2 – Disney Channel, YouTube
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Then, in April, Netflix announced a mobile feature called “Clips.” Its vertical videos draw from the Netflix library while also incorporating original content. The primary goal is to drive engagement—and, in the case of Disney+, make the app a “must-visit daily destination.”
However, that does not mean HBO is a latecomer to the growing trend of shorts and vertical video.
HBO Condensed The Sopranos for TikTok
In 2024, HBO celebrated the 25th anniversary of The Sopranos by launching a dedicated TikTok account featuring 25-second recaps of all 86 episodes. The campaign attempted to condense the acclaimed drama’s complex, hour-long installments into bite-sized videos for younger audiences.
The promotion accompanied a larger anniversary collection on Max that included 15 deleted scenes, three of which had never previously been released, and more than five hours of behind-the-scenes material.
Still, many fans were appalled. Whether the TikTok campaign encouraged Gen Z users to seek out full episodes remains unclear. However, it inspired plenty of discussion, debate, and jokes online.
AI Will Select Clips From the HBO Max Library
HBO Max Shorts will rely partly on an artificial intelligence tool developed internally by Warner Bros. Discovery.
The machine-learning system analyzes scene-level metadata while combing through thousands of hours of programming. It then recommends moments that might work as short clips. Human editors will make the final selections and determine which clips best represent the original productions. The chosen scenes will then be reformatted vertically for mobile playback.
“We’re thrilled to launch this application of AI to accelerate the creation of these clips and look forward to quickly expanding to make even more of our amazing content offering discoverable through this new feature,” said Deepna Devkar, Warner Bros. Discovery’s senior vice president of machine learning engineering.
Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg and Peter Claffey as Dunk in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – HBO
Although the company emphasized human oversight, reframing footage created for widescreen television or theatrical exhibition could prove controversial. HBO Max carries an extensive library of classic films, and scenes carefully composed for a horizontal frame may lose important visual information when cropped into a narrow vertical format.
Alongside Shorts, HBO Max is testing an AI-assisted conversational search tool called “Ask HBO Max.” It allows users to enter natural phrases such as “in the mood for a comedy” or “dysfunctional family drama” rather than searching for a specific title.
Together, the additions reflect how streaming platforms are increasingly borrowing social media features to keep subscribers inside their apps. Whether classic films and prestige television benefit from being reshaped for endless scrolling is another question.
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