Jan 7, 2023

Why HBO Max removed hundreds of Looney Tunes classics from its service.

On December 31, HBO Max removed more than 250 Looney Tunes theatrical shorts from its service, halving the number of classic Warner Bros. shorts available on the service.

Which cartoons were removed from the service - the deleted shorts were produced after 1950 and include films directed by Fritz Fluellen and Bob McKimson. The deletions particularly affected Chuck Jones, whose best-known films include “The Rabbit of Seville,” “The Great Duck Adventure,” “Feed the Kitty,” “24½ Duck Dodgers,” “An Evening of Frogs,” “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Doc,” and the “Wile E. Coyote/The Road Runner” series. Most of his films were deleted.

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) does not own these animated films? The Looney Tunes shorts owned by WBD were licensed to WBD-owned HBO Max as part of an in-house agreement. This licensing agreement expires at the end of 2022, and WBD has chosen to keep the cartoons away from its own company.

Will the work be revived? According to a Variety report citing an insider familiar with the service, the shorts will not return to HBO Max.

What happens next - no one knows. Warner Bros. produced just over 1,000 shorts under the “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies” banners from the 1930s through the 1960s, but only a quarter of them are available on HBO Max. The company can license packages of shorts to other streaming services or keep them in its vaults.

Is this normal - sadly, yes. Streaming services have little regard for historical heritage or making classic animation available to subscribers; WBD also owns hundreds of MGM cartoons that are not made available on HBO Max. The Walt Disney Company produced hundreds of animated shorts during its golden age, only a fraction of which are available on the Disney+ service. Paramount owns hundreds of Terrytoons films, but offers none on Paramount+; NBCUniversal owns hundreds of Walter Lantz-produced shorts, but they are not available on Peacock. Sony owns hundreds of Columbia Pictures shorts that are not licensed to any streaming service.

Is there hope for fans of classic animation - don't hold your breath. In fact, Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Weidenfels said last Thursday, animation fans can expect more content to be removed from these services. Contrary to intuition, Weidenfels believes that the less content they offer their customers, the more they can charge: “There is no doubt that the prices of these products are too low. If you look at the trend line over the past 20-36 months, many players have gradually started to raise their prices. So I think a consensus is forming that the dumping price phase is over."