It’s a day that ends in a Y, which means it’s time for Warner Bros. Discover killed a few more projects that were already in development for HBO Max and — wow, would you believe that? — are all cartoons. Is David Zaslav actually Who Framed Roger Rabbit villain Judge Doom? Because this guy has a real badass in cartoons. The latest batch of HBO Max originals to be unfairly killed before their time (according to Variety) are Merry Little Batman, The Day The Earth Blow Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical, Did Do That To The Holidays: A Steve Urkel Story, The Amazing World Of Gumball: The Movie and Batman: The Caped Crusader. Some of it hasn’t been publicized much until now, but the Caped Crusader has been as high-profile as animated projects get. Produced by JJ Abrams, Batman director Matt Reeves, and Batman: The Animated Series co-creator Bruce Timm, the series was positioned as a darker, more mature, noir-inspired spiritual successor to Batman: TAS. Batman show—basically the exact thing ’90s kids have been dying for since Batman: TAS aired. There may be some hope, though: According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit, the project is “not canceled” but simply “not going to air on HBO Max.” Kit says it’s “deep in production” and that it “will show up somewhere.” Assuming this is true, it’s crazy that a Batman show with big names involved wouldn’t be streaming on the service owned by the company that owns Batman. Say what you want about Disney devouring all of American pop culture, but it would never ignore something like this. Hell, call the show Nighthawk: Caped Crusader and just sell it to Disney so Kevin Feige can squeeze it into the MCU. They have to do Squadron Supreme at some point, right? As fun as that would be, the most likely destination for the Caped Crusader would be Cartoon Network, which was also involved in developing the series alongside HBO Max when it was first announced. However, if something was going to air on regular TV, wouldn’t it be just as easy to put it on the streaming service owned by the same people? Well, what do we know? We’re not the clearly very capable people who make decisions to unceremoniously trash the art at Warner Bros. Discovery. (And by “art,” we mean Do I Do That To The Holidays: A Steve Urkel Story.)
