Chris Wallace’s Show Reportedly Headed to HBO Max as CNN Under Chris Licht Starts to Take Shape

Credit: CNN

Chris Wallace’s now-defunct CNN+ interview show, Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, will head over to HBO Max, according to a Thursday report from Puck’s Dylan Byers.

The fate of CNN+ talent has been a topic of much speculation in the media world after the shock announcement that CNN+ would fold after a whopping $300 million-plus investment and less than a month of streaming.

Much of the reporting and opining regarding CNN’s future has focused on Chris Licht, who officially replaced Jeff Zucker as the head of the network on Monday. While Licht said in a memo his first day on the job was “anti-climatic,” he takes over the network at a critical moment, both for CNN and the cable news as ratings are down and the media landscape continues to shift more and more online. CNN+, which was shut down as a cost-saving move related to the merger that created Warner Bros. Discovery, was originally heralded as the vehicle which would help modernize CNN and allow the network to reach a larger online audience.

Wallace emerged from the ruins of CNN+ largely unscathed as his interview show had been one of the streamer’s content high-points, yielding multiple headline-grabbing exchanges.

Byers added that “Wallace will continue to do work for CNN, as well” and that “the maneuver appears to be a graceful way to respect Wallace’s stature in the business, try something new, and presumably keep him warm for future high-profile interviews or debates or bipartisan political tentpoles, perhaps a harbinger of what’s to come.”

Wallace, a longtime Washington, DC veteran and Fox News host, appeared to be a perfect fit to stay on at CNN and help Licht to realize his “journalism-first” approach to remaking CNN.

“Under new chief Chris Licht, CNN will dial down the prime-time partisanship and double down on the network’s news-gathering muscle, top sources tell me,” wrote Axios’ Mike Allen back in February when Licht’s hiring was first announced, setting the stage for how Licht might reform the network.

Byers notes in his report that any decision as to who might replace Chris Cuomo at 9 p.m. is a decision that is “still weeks, if not months” away – a position that seemed a possibility for Wallace.