New year, same Warner Bros. Discovery.
HBO Max has quietly removed 256 Looney Tunes shorts. Before the most recent purging, the streamer contained 511 shorts from the series. Today there are just 255.
Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Marvin the Martian and many more cartoon characters were initially introduced in the 1930s Warner Bros. series of animated comedy shorts and later appeared in Warner Bros.’ Merrie Melodies series.
Now, only the shorts before 1951 are available on the streamer.
According to various reports, the shorts and three seasons of The Flintstones were licensed to HBO Max from Warner Bros., but the licensing agreements expired.
HBO Max made headlines over the summer after Warner Bros. Discovery caught the industry off guard by canceling the nearly completed $90 million Batgirl feature film. This was followed by the news that the streamer had also axed Scoob!: Holiday Haunt, a follow-up to the 2020 film Scoob.
The streamer has continued to pull content left and right, including at least six HBO Max Original films, 20 original series and nearly 200 episodes of Sesame Street and various specials.
And most recently, the streamer has axed at least six shows and plans to remove multiple titles from its library, including high-end HBO dramas Westworld and The Nevers. However, the company announced it’d be moving some of its canceled programs to third-party FAST services.
More cuts and cancellations are looming as Warner Bros. Discovery plans to merge HBO Max and Discovery+ into a single streaming service, which is set to launch in spring 2023.