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Something is going down over at Warner Bros. Discovery. While the most significant story has been the shelving of Batgirl, it seems that the company has also quietly removed movies from HBO Max.
According to Variety, there has been a handful of Warner Bros. movies removed from HBO Max over the last few weeks. That includes Robert Zemeckis’ remake of The Witches starring Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci, and Chris Rock; Seth Rogen’s comedy An American Pickle; Angel Manuel Soto’s drama Charm City Kings; Melissa McCarthy’s comedy Superintelligence; Doug Liman’s heist comedy Locked Down starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor; and sci-fi rom-com Moonshot starring Lana Condor and Cole Sprouse. Each of the movies had been labelled as an HBO Max Original, but it would appear that their removal seems to be part of an effort to cut costs. Variety also reported that a reboot of House Party that was supposed to have premiered last week had been scrubbed from the release schedule altogether. The company will be reporting its second-quarter 2022 earnings tomorrow, so we could hear more about what’s happening with HBO Max.
The Batgirl movie, as well as Scoob: Holiday Haunt, were shelved by Warner Bros. Discovery so that they could use them as a tax write-off. The company is anxious to shed its debt after the recent merger and had an opportunity to recoup some costs if they pulled the plug on Batgirl. Doing so will ensure they’ll never be able to monetize Batgirl, which means another studio can’t buy it. The news naturally came as a major disappointment to Batgirl directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. The pair released a statement on Instagram, saying they are “Saddened and shocked by the news” and “still can’t believe it.” They continued, saying “It was a dream to work with such fantastic actors like Michael Keaton, JK Simmons, Brendan Fraser, Jacob Scipio, Corey Johnson, Rebecca Front and especially the great Leslie Grace, who portrayed Batgirl with so much passion, dedication and humanity.” I can’t imagine all this cost-cutting will help the studio creatively, but we’ll see how it plays out.
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