That’s all folks.
The original Looney Tunes animated shorts, which ran during the golden age of animation from 1930 through 1969, have been scrubbed by Warner Bros. Discovery-owned Max.
Deadline confirmed with a representative that the original shorts are no longer on Max. This is part of a new plan whereby the streamer will prioritize adult and family programming. Children’s programming, such as Looney Tunes and Sesame Street before it, doesn’t fare as well and is no longer viewed as a priority.
Other spinoff versions of Looney Tunes remain on the service, including six seasons of 2020’s Looney Tunes Cartoons, two seasons of 2015’s New Looney Tunes (the third season and some episodes from Season 1 are not available), two seasons of 2002’s Baby Looney Tunes, 2021’s four-episode scripted podcast Looney Tunes Presents: Bugs and Daffy’s Thanksgiving Road Trip, two seasons of 2023’s Tiny Toons Looniversity and its corresponding 42-minute Tiny Toons Looniversity: Spring Break special (though its winter spinoff is not streaming), five seasons of 1995’s The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries and two seasons of 2022’s Bugs Bunny Builders.
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This marks a departure from previous maneuvers: In 2023, Max clarified that the classic cartoon was not leaving the platform after an erroneous list of titles being removed in December included the program on it. “Looney Tunes was included in error as a title leaving the platform. This is not the case and the show will continue streaming on Max,” a statement read at the time.
The decision is not a surprising one, as children’s animation has long seen a steady decline. Last year, the parent company shuttered Cartoon Network’s website, just a week after its Boomerang streaming service — which aired mostly classic cartoons from Warner Bros. Animation library — shut down.
The move to scrub Looney Tunes from Max comes amid the March 14 release of The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Story, the first fully animated feature-length project receiving a theatrical opening in the franchise. That movie was originally greenlit for Max. However, when Warner Bros. Discovery took over, the straight-to-streaming movie wasn’t deemed a priority and sold to Ketchup Entertainment out of the American Film Market. The previous David Zaslav-led administration at Warner Bros. also made the Looney Tunes feature film, Coyote vs. Acme. That movie was shelved by the current WBD administration as it was deemed too costly to release, with the pic’s $70M production cost getting a writeoff from the corporation.
The post Original ‘Looney Tunes’ No Longer Available On Max appeared first on Deadline.
