That's All Folks for Classic Looney Tunes on Max

[Mark Jeffries]

As "The Day the Earth Blew Up," the first all-animated feature starring any classic Warner Bros. characters had a meh box office last weekend for the indie distributor that picked i up when Warner Bros. dropped it, Daddy Zaslav's underlings have dropped all classic Looney Tunes shorts from Max, saying that they are just children's fare and that the streamer's new focus is on "family and adult programming"--Daddy Zaslav, you're dithpicable:

https://deadline.com/2025/03/original-looney-tunes-removed-max-warner-bros-1236327964/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Made-for-TV shows starring the characters, including the recent "Looney Tunes Cartoons" series (which is pretty good), will remain on the streamer, but the classics are the heart and soul of the series and almost worth a Max subscription by themselves.  Daddy Zaslav--what a maroon!

[M-D November]

Saying Looney Tunes are "children's fare" shows that Zazlav didn't actually grow up with Looney Tunes.  Because they were NOT written for children.

Someone make this make sense.  How does dropping the Looney Tunes library help WBD financially?  Doesn't Warners own the library outright?  It's not like they're paying to license the shorts...

[Jim Ellwanger]

I wouldn't be surprised if there IS some kind of internal accounting situation where Max gets "charged" for content that's owned by WB. (This seems similar to the fact that a number of Max original series are no longer available on Max.)

That said, in June, the WB Archive is releasing Volume 1 of yet another physical media series of the classic cartoons, so WB's not completely disavowing the existence of the original Looney Tunes. https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=36122

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[Bob Jersey]

They coalesced the library back in the 1990s when then-Time Warner gained full control of Turner... and multiple reports, not all of which I can still find, suggested that WB wants to go back to the pre-TBS days and sell the old 'toons only to linear broadcast (e.g. MeTV Toons, which is not coming to our local cable any time soon due to colossal licensing fees that are passed on to distributors) and FAST streaming services, with commercials inbetween...

B

M-D November, March 18th:

[Kevin M.]

I bought all of J Straczynski’s Babylon 5 script books as well as his autobiography, and in both he wrote extensively about the creative bookkeeping of Warner Bros. Yes, they do license shows and movies and cartoons back to themselves or to their own networks and streaming platforms, and they will intentionally deny distribution rights to rivals even though the result is Warners making less money. 

You will never be able to logically explain Hollywood mathematics, but good luck trying.

Kevin M. (RPCV)

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