As you all know by now, Warner Bros has a new CEO who hates cartoons. HATES HATES HATES cartoons. Wants nothing to do with ’em even if they’re the safest bets in the world and based on their most proven brands. One wonders what, exactly, cartoons ever did to Zaslav….perhaps a toon shot his parents in an alley when he was eight.
And speaking of Batman, he’s gotta go. He’s outta here — at least if he’s made of digital ink and paint. One of the shining attractions of HBO Max in 2023 might have been Batman: Caped Crusader, an all-new Gotham-toon directed by the legend himself, Bruce Timm. It would’ve attracted a lot of new customers to the service and retained a lot of the old ones. But…nope.
Zaslav is being kinder to this one than some other recent projects..he’s allowing it to continue, provided another service or company is willing to run it instead. That’s correct…WB is willingly farming out its most valuable IP, in one of their most anticipated new shows, to someone else. Clearly this is the smartest CEO alive. It’d be wild if this wound up on Disney+.
But in addition to Batman: Caped Crusader, five other projects are now in the same boat. They range from the Gumball movie (the revived series is still coming to CN), to two Looney Tunes features, to two holiday specials. The Looney Tunes movies are Bye Bye Bunny, a musical with screenplay and lyrics by Emmy Award winner Ariel Dumas (The Stephen Colbert Show) and The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (EP’d by Uncle Grandpa’s Pete Browngardt).
The two holiday specials, the long-delayed Merry Little Batman and Jaleel White’s Did I Do That To The Holidays: A Steve Urkel Story, will probably have a harder time finding a home. I can tell you that if Urkel survives but Gumball doesn’t, this reporter is going on a chainsaw rampage.
