Warner Bros. shocked the entertainment industry when on August 2, 2022, they announced that Batgirl, a DC superhero film intended for HBO Max release that starred Leslie Grace and that had finished filming, would not be released on either HBO Max or in theaters. On top of that, they canceled Scoob! Holiday Haunt, a sequel to the 2020 film Scoob! that was set to premiere on HBO Max in 2022 that was already in post-production and almost finished. Warner Bros. had reportedly already spent $90 million to make Batgirl and $40 million on Scoob! Holiday Haunt. It was reported the studio will try to claim both films as a tax write-off as a way to recoup their investment, meaning that the studio cannot profit off them, meaning they cannot sell them or release them, likely leaving them to never be seen.
This decision to cancel almost completed films in two major Warner Bros. franchises was an unprecedented move that took many by surprise. The following day, six HBO Max original movies — Moonshot, Super Intelligence, The Witches, American Pickel, Charmed King City, and Lockdown — were removed from the streaming service, an unheard-of move for a streamer to take their original films off their platform.
This is another in a series of moves that Warner Bros. Discovery has been making since their merger at the beginning of 2022, including a great deal of TV cancelations, and it doesn't appear to be the end, as more sweeping changes are set to happen. Rumors have already begun that massive layoffs are on the horizon, and given the studio's new sense of cutting costs, this might be a sad reality in the future. Here is a breakdown of everything going on at Warner Bros. Discovery, why it is happening, and what it means for the future.
Warner Bros. Musical Chairs of Ownership
Warner Bros. Discovery was formed on April 8, 2022, as a result of the merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery Inc. This is just one of many new corporate structures that Warner Bros. has had in the 21st century. TimeWarner Inc. was the corporation's name until 2001, when they were acquired by AOL and became AOL TimeWarner. Despite Time Warner Inc. having more assets, AOL's larger market capitalization gave them primary control.
However, shortly after the acquisition the growth and profitability of the AOL division began to fall, and in 2002, AOL Time Warner reported a loss of $99 billion, which at the time was the largest loss ever reported by a company. In 2003, they dropped AOL from their name and became Time Warner once again. In 2018, the company was acquired by AT&T for $85.4 billion. The company was then rebranded WarnerMedia and many changes were acquired. This regime includes the launch of HBO Max and a pivot into streaming.
It was not meant to last, as just three years after the acquisition, AT&T spun WarnerMedia out and would be merged with Discovery Inc. Discovery's current CEO David Zaslav would be put in charge and once the merger was complete a new company was formed: Warner Bros. Discovery. As the new company was formed, the new owners would want to make their own legacy for the studio which leads to a sea of changes.
HBO Max Canceled Projects
Shelving Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt were shocking, but they are just the first in a long line of cuts that Warner Bros. Discovery has been making since the company officially formed, as David Zaslav looks to make his name in the entertainment industry. HBO Max had canceled series like Raised By Wolves, Close Enough, Made for Love, and recently Gordita Chronicles; meanwhile, other shows like Avenue 5 are in limbo between seasons with no updates, despite the entirety of season two having been already filmed. CW series like Legends of Tomorrow, Naomi, and Batwoman were canceled, and the TBS series Chad was pulled from the air just hours before its second season premiere.
They have cut back on original programming for TNT and TBS, and also canceled the latter's Full Frontal With Samantha Bee. David Zaslav has been tightening his grip, even going so far as to be angry about the studio's previous regime greenlighting Clint Eastwood's Cry Macho, which the studio did because of Clint Eastwood's 50-year working relationship with them and, based on Zaslav's comment, might not continue in the future.
The studio is also looking to heavily refocus its efforts on the DC brand. In addition to canceling three Arrowverse CW series and the Batgirl film, the studio also pulled the plug on an HBO Max Wonder Twins movie right after they had announced the cast. When canceling Batgirl, the studio said they were looking to refocus DC as a theatrical experience. Combined with that, there's the previous report that the studio wants to have a more interconnected universe of projects and is looking for their own Kevin Feige-type figure. All of this leaves the fate of other projects like the Black-led Superman project by Ta-Nehisi Coates and J.J. Abrams, the Black Canary spin-off film, and the Zatanna movie up in the air and on the chopping block.
Releasing Movies on HBO Max in 2021 is the Turning Point
In many ways, Zaslav is responding to the controversial decision by previous Warner Bros. CEO Jason Kilar to offer all the studio's 2021 film slate simultaneously on HBO Max in the U.S. as well as in theaters. Internally dubbed 'Project Popcorn,' the initiative was implanted during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to bolster HBO Max's subscribers as well as clear up the production pipeline for the studio, as they had many delayed films on the release schedule and more in production. The decision was a controversial one among many, particularly filmmakers, and even led longtime Warner Bros. filmmaker Christopher Nolan to depart and bring his next film, Oppenheimer, to Universal Pictures.
While Warner Bros. did manage to have some box office hits, like Godzilla vs Kong and Dune, which both grossed over $100 million domestically, many of the studio's slate were certainly impacted at the box office not just by the pandemic but also having high profile movies like The Suicide Squad, Mortal Kombat, and The Matrix Resurrections available at home. Not one Warner Bros. movie of 2021 managed to make it into the 2021 domestic top 10, while films that did play exclusively in theaters before going to streaming (like Spider-Man: No Way Home, F9, No Time To Die, and Sing 2) all performed well at the box office even with the concerns of the pandemic.
The value of a theatrical release would only increase in 2022 with the fact that The Batman, the first theatrically exclusive movie from Warner Bros. in two years, opened to $134 million. The continued success of Top Gun: Maverick and the dropping stock prices and subscribers of Netflix seemed to indicate that the death of the theatrical experience was greatly exaggerated. This means that Zaslav will certainly slim down and tighten the budget on many HBO Max projects, and clearly cancel them if they are no longer the priority.
Whereas Kilar prioritized streaming and HBO Max, greenlighting multiple projects for HBO Max, Zaslav wants to invest more in theatrical films than scripted streaming material for HBO Max. This is sadly where projects like Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt become victims.
Why Batgirl and Scoob?
Reportedly, Warner Bros. Discovery didn't think Batgirl was big enough to release in theaters, sadly indicating that the studio only sees superhero movies as massive budget tentpole films with no room for mid-budget projects even if they are connected to one of the most successful franchises of all time (and one that proved to work with the release of Joker in 2019 which went on to gross $1 billion).
While Batgirl cannot release until after The Flash, as that film explains why Michael Keaton is now Batman in the DCEU, Batgirl could have easily been held onto for a year and released in theaters in October or November 2023 or kept its HBO Max release pattern, as there can be a balancing act between big screen theatrical DC projects and smaller streaming titles. However, the movie was also seen as too expensive to invest in streaming.
HBO
Scoob! was originally set for theaters in 2020 but was sent to PVOD during the COVID-19 pandemic, two weeks before HBO Max officially launched. Scoob! A Holiday Haunt could have been a theatrically released holiday movie for Warner Bros. but more importantly it was designed for HBO Max to hopefully become not just a big event for the holidays this year but hopefully a part of audiences holiday traditions for years to come, making HBO Max a platform that would constantly need to be renewed every holiday.
While one would hope Warner Bros. Discovery would do the right thing, and release these films in some form instead of making them tax write-offs and throwing away the working relationship with the talent involved in these films, it must be said that this period of transition is a messy one. The previous regime change to AT&T resulted in the Justice League reshoots and not delaying the film, and Warner Bros. has been dealing with those consistences ever since. In many ways, this is the studio repeating both the past mistakes of handling Justice League under Time Warner and the Project Popcorn initiative that alienated so much of the talent under AT&T. Warner Bros. Discovery might be a new company, but it is making the same old mistakes.