HBO Max junks more animated shows, including high-profile Batman series

Last year, WarnerMedia and Discovery announced that they were going to merge, with Discovery CEO David Zaslav in charge of the new joint operation. We now have Warner Bros. Discovery, and Zaslav has revealed himself to pretty much be a real-life supervillain. You can tell because of all the superhero stuff he’s cancelling, from pulling the plug on the upcoming Batgirl movie even though it was basically done to kicking the Batman: The Caped Crusader animated series off HBO Max.

The Caped Crusader was produced by J.J. Abrams, The Batman director Matt Reeves, and Batman: The Animated Series co-creator Bruce Timm. According to The A.V. Club, it was being positioned as a more grown-up version of Batman: TAS, which is still one of the gold standards for animated superhero shows even today, decades after it went off the air.

To be fair, The Caped Crusader isn’t getting cancelled, just booted off HBO Max. That’s according to The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit, who says the show is “deep in production” and that it “will show up somewhere.” It’ll probably be on Cartoon Network, which was involved with the show at the beginning.

Why it couldn’t also be on HBO Max, I have no idea. Everyone loves Batman, why wouldn’t you want him on your streaming service? Don’t you want money and success, Zaslav?

David Zaslav gets rid of Batman shows and movies because he’s a supervillain who wants to destroy Gotham without resistance

Other animated shows at HBO Max haven’t been as lucky as Batman: The Caped Crusader; Zaslav has straight-up pulled the plug on many, including Infinity Train, Summer Camp Island, Merry Little Batman, The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical, Did I Do That To The Holidays: A Steve Urkel Story and The Amazing World Of Gumball: The Movie and The Fungies! (Merry Little Batman, by the way, was a Christmas special thing.)

Were all of these shows going to be great? Probably not (although that Steve Urkel one was obviously a winner) but to axe them all in one full swoop is callous, terrible for optics, and disrespectful to the people who put tons of work into them, many of whom found out that they didn’t have jobs anymore by reading about it online like everyone else.

Zaslav is doing all this to cut costs at the company. Incidentally, he reportedly made $246 million at Discovery in 2021. Hmmm, where else might he want to cut costs? I have no idea…

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