The latest round of cancellations at HBO Max has fans fuming. This week, many vented their outrage on social media, with some saying that they canceled their subscriptions or were planning to. Many also called for a general boycott, hoping to show enough outrage to catch the streamer’s attention.
HBO Max is owned by WarnerMedia, which has just merged with Discovery Inc. to become Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. (WBD). The newly-formed company intends to combine HBO Max with its other streaming service Discovery+ by next year, and so far its work toward that consolidation has mostly meant heartbreaking cancellations for fans. This week, TV Line reported that a highly anticipated new Batman
cartoon was being canceled before it had even aired, along with some Looney Tunes projects that seemed like easy wins for the streamer.
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Fans were baffled by these decisions. The series Batman: The Caped Crusader came from an all-star team of creators including the writers and animators behind Batman: The Animated Series in the 1990s, as well as director Matt Reeves who made The Batman earlier this year. This seemed like a guaranteed win, so fans couldn’t imagine why WBD was dropping it.
Likewise, a Batman Christmas special was canceled along with The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie and Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical. Here’s a rundown of some of the top posts about these cancellations on social media this week.
Boycott
First and foremost, many users called for a general boycott of HBO Max, and described ways of letting the company know that the dwindling animation catalog was the main reason why.
Synonymous
To many fans, Warner Bros. and Looney Tunes are practically synonymous. To see the company putting fewer resources into that franchise seemed unthinkable.
Easy Win
You don’t need to be a particularly hardcore fan of superhero media or animation to know that the team behind Batman: The Animated Series is absolutely legendary. Canceling a new Batman project with those names attached seemed baffling to many fans.
Shareholders
Oftentimes, the explanation given for inscrutable decisions by a streaming service is that it will somehow appease the shareholders and improve the company’s stock prices. In this case, many fans thought that it was contradictory.
Target Audience
Many fans wondered what the end goal of these animation cancellations really was. It seemed crazy to imagine that all of the animation projects at Warner Bros. would fall by the wayside, as viewers could remark firsthand on how much of a staple these programs are to households with children.
Creators
Many fans shared their sympathies for the creators of these productions who are losing access to their own work, in many cases.
What’s Next?
Finally, with about a year to go before the consolidation of HBO Max and Discovery+ is complete, many fans wondered what else could possibly be canceled.
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