Vintage Looney Tunes cartoons have come off Warner Bros’ Max streaming service, as children’s programming gets deprioritised.
The legacy of Warner Bros is in part tied to the animated shorts that bear its name. The Looney Tunes cartoons in particular have been a staple of the company, running for decades and in more recent times, on the company’s Max streaming service.
But on the weekend that The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie debuted in US cinemas – albeit not distributed by Warner Bros – the vintage Looney Tunes catalogue has been scrubbed from Max.
This is a major part of the studio’s heritage, but not one that fits its goals under the current regime. David Zaslav currently heads up Warner Bros Discovery, and it’s his era at the studio that, of course, has seen completed films destroyed in favour of a tax credit.
As per a Deadline report, the deletion of the Looney Tunes short films from Max, which clearly were clogging up the hard drive space, is part of a move away from children’s programming. This, apparently, is no longer viewed as a priority for Max, because it doesn’t fare as well as family or adult programming.
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As such, the likes of Looney Tunes shorts and Sesame Street aren’t viable enough for the Max streaming service. Executives of Max clearly know the price of everything. Whether value comes into it is harder to determine.
A few more recent Looney Tunes spin-offs remain on the Max service, but not the original material.
It’s the latest reinforcement of the fact that streaming services, even with their vast catalogues, are not archivists. That they will only prioritise things that get enough viewers, and if they don’t – no matter the historical significance of the material – then said shows and films are gone. In an era where physical media has been downgraded too… well, you can fill in the rest.
Max currently runs in the US, and is due to come to the UK at the start of 2027. Looney Tunes, by the sounds of it, won’t be included.
Here’s the Deadline report. Read it and weep.
