Historic Looney Tunes Shorts Removed From HBO Max on Looney Tunes Movie Opening Weekend

A “that’s all, folks” gag would wounded excessively overmuch close now. Warner Brothers has officially removed its full catalog of archetypal Looney Tunes shorts from its streaming service, HBO Max. The legendary shorts spanned astir 40 years, from 1930 to 1969, during what is considered to beryllium a “golden age” for animation — and it should spell without saying that they made Warner Brothers what it is today.

Deadline confirmed that the removal is portion of a institution inaugural to “prioritize big and household programming,” arsenic children’s programming specifically does not garner large numbers for the streamer, truthful it’s nary longer being considered a precedence — with zero respect for however culturally important the worldly is, clearly. At the extremity of 2024, for example, HBO canceled its woody with Sesame Street for caller episodes, contempt the bid being a literal bedrock for puerility acquisition since 1969. Some much caller Looney Tunes spinoffs stay connected HBO Max, but the bosom and psyche of the Looney Tunes franchise is officially gone.

This stroke to Looney Tunes’ bequest comes astatine a weird time, arsenic the caller movie The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Story debuted successful theaters connected March 14. Max primitively ordered the project, but yet the institution sold it to Ketchup Entertainment via the American Film Market aft the WB and Discovery merger. The smalltime organisation institution seemingly had a humble selling fund for the caller film, arsenic the movie has lone done a small implicit $3 cardinal astatine the container bureau for opening play connected implicit 2,800 theaters nationwide.

It seems arsenic though with the outrage produced by the attraction of past year’s Coyote Vs. Acme, folks would decidedly beryllium filling the seats for The Day the Earth Blew Up if they simply knew it was successful theaters to beryllium seen. A twelvemonth ago, Warner Brothers Discovery decided against releasing the Looney Tunes movie Coyote Vs. Acme contempt it being completed, implicit concerns that it was excessively costly to distribute.

The determination has been the taxable of overmuch disdain from artists and animation lovers. In February, prima Will Forte called the determination “f—king bulls—t,” and remarked that the prime to not merchandise the movie was some inexplicable and “made [his] humor boil.”

Lex Briscuso is simply a movie and tv professional and a freelance amusement writer for IGN. You tin travel her connected Twitter astatine @nikonamerica.