HBO Max removes a whole lot of iconic Looney Tunes shorts

At one level in historical past, the Warner Bros. identify (now Warner Bros. Discovery) was virtually synonymous with its catalog of iconic cartoon shorts, that includes characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Wile E. Coyote. Despite that legacy, Warner Bros. Discovery has now pulled a whole lot of basic Looney Tunes shorts from its HBO Max streaming platform, alongside 78 episodes of The Flintstones.

Variety has confirmed that seasons 16–31 of Looney Tunes have been faraway from HBO Max as of December thirty first, totaling 256 episodes that initially aired between 1950 and 2004. Some iconic shorts pulled from the service embody “What’s Opera, Doc?,” “Feed the Kitty,” “Rabbit of Seville,” “Duck Amuck,” and “One Froggy Evening” (via Vulture).

Seasons 4–6 of The Flintstones have additionally been pulled from HBO Max, which drastically reduces the variety of basic cartoons accessible to look at by means of the service. Warner Bros. Discovery licensed Looney Tunes and The Flintstones content material with its personal HBO Max streaming service when it launched in 2020 however didn’t renew these licensing agreements after they expired on the finish of 2022.

While it was initially reported that this content material was temporarily removed for maintenance, Variety has since confirmed that the eliminated episodes is not going to be returning to HBO Max. Given that Warner Bros. Discovery owns the rights to each franchises (Hanna-Barbera was folded into Warner Bros. Animation in 2001), it’s not clear if the misplaced Looney Tunes and Flintstones content material will probably be made accessible to different streaming companies.

The determination to drag these cartoon classics is unlucky (and perplexing on condition that Looney Tunes is a legacy IP for Warner Bros.) nevertheless it’s additionally not precisely stunning. HBO Max has been culling an excessive amount of content material lately because it seeks to scale back bills — successfully retiring Cartoon Network Studios in October 2022 and axing Westworld, Raised by Wolves, and the unreleased Batgirl film. In addition, 200 episodes of Sesame Street had been faraway from HBO Max in August of final yr.