There’s major churn happening at HBO Max. Trade pundits received a jolt last night when it became public that Warner Bros Discovery had scrapped the $90 million ‘Batgirl’ despite the film already being completed. ‘Batgirl’ was reportedly in the final stages of post-production, when Warner Bros Discovery made the shocking decision. A prominent industry insider revealed that he had seen nothing like this ever happening even in thirty years of being in the business.
Now, close on the heels of this stunning news comes information that HBO Max has quietly removed six of its original films from its content library. All six films are HBO Max Originals, made exclusively for directly streaming on the platform. The six films in question are two Anne Hathaway films, ‘The Witches’ and ‘Locked Down’, Melissa McCarthy’s ‘Superintelligence’, Seth Rogen’s ‘An American Pickle’, Dylan Sprouse’s ‘Moonshot’ and the Sundance debuting ‘Charm City Kings’. Interestingly, five of these films were recently licensed by Prime Video India for streaming on its India platform.
But that’s not all.
Another film, a remake of ‘House Party’, was scrapped just before release, quite similarly to Batgirl‘s scrapping. The film was from LeBron James’ Springhill Entertainment, and was to premiere on HBO Max on July 28. The film has disappeared from HBO Max’s content slate.
The aforementioned news comes in the wake of hush-hush rumours that Warner Bros Discovery is preparing to wind down HBO Max completely and dissolve it into Discovery. The streamer might be reduced to a tab in the main Discovery app. Scooper Grace Randolph shared the above speculations on her Twitter account.
HBO Max has recently curbed its expansion plans majorly. It scrapped its plans to invest in original content in the Nordic regions. Its South East Asia expansion plans are on hold since long. The stakeholders at HBO Max have also shared recently that all expansion for HBO Max into new territories is on hold for the time being.
Stay tuned to Binged.com for fresh updates into the chaos happening at HBO Max.