Warner Bros. Discovery shelves over 60 shows and fans are outraged

The future is grim for animated shows under Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and HBO Max. The massive media company is going in a new direction after a change of leadership – new CEO David Zaslav. Zaslav was the former CEO of Discovery, a network more known for its science reality shows and the like.

Ever since Warner Bros and Discovery merged back in April of this year, there’s been massive change in plans. Zaslav wants to prioritize making movies for the big screens and cinemas and is trying to focus less on their online streaming service, HBO Max. As a result of this, WBD has removed more than 60 shows and movies from HBO Max, many of them being animated shows. Here’s a list of all the animated shows cancelled by WBD according to ComicBook:

Among the most notable series in the list above are fan favorites like OK KO, Infinity Train, Close Enough, Mao Mao, and Uncle Grandpa.

The people who worked on all these projects were not directly informed by WBD about the removal of their creations from HBO Max. They all found out the same way as we consumers did: Through news outlets online. It’s extremely unfortunate for the animators and creators who worked so hard – it’s all gone, many of their work unfinished. It’s like they got hit by a truck with this sudden news of their show’s removal. It’s even worse to think that all these amazing shows were removed just for tax write-offs.

Understandably, fans are outraged on social media. There was a lot of interest in many of these shows, so it doesn’t truly make sense for WBD to cancel them. It just seems that the new leadership of the company is not very fond of successful animated shows. Seems like the disrespect for the animation medium is still apparent even in our increasingly progressive society. If I have to hear “It’s just a cartoon” from a random dude again, they’d better be ready to catch these hands.

Let’s take a look at some reactions from Twitter.

People are dreading d-day and are calling it a massacre:

https://twitter.com/jctoons2D/status/1560105478499102721?s=20&t=kd_gIR8KrW6xTkrlBfYatA

Let’s not be surprised when HBO Max could lose support from subscribers.

We know by now that WBD is doing this to save money, as reported by DiscussingFilm.

Infinity Train? Never heard of it.

This tweet explains itself:

 

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