“No! They are the enemy. We’re going to crush them.”

So said AT&T’s chief executive John Stankey, allegedly, according to the New York Times.

Stankey was referring to Netflix, the current King of all streamers.

HBO Max went live on Wednesday and is set for a successful launch due to its incredibly popular originals like The Game of Thrones and The Sopranos along with sitcoms like Friends and The Big Bang Theory. It also has a well-furnished library of films. I

Initially, AT&T executives thought about bundling their current service HBO Now with Netflix but that is when Stanky uttered those words.

The monthly subscription to HBO Max is priced much higher than Netflix’s $9 basic plan, Hulu’s $5.99 basic plan, Disney+’s $7 plan, and Apple TV+’s $4.99 plan at $14.99.

According to the report in NYT, HBO is heavily hoping for the success of its new streamer and AT&T is planning to spend more than $4.5 billion over the next few years to ensure the service has 50 million users by 2025.

That’ll be tough considering that Netflix is enjoying more popularity than ever before due to the coronavirus lockdowns and hit 182 million subscribers worldwide in April.