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Yeah the new execs from the new ownership are really throwing things in turmoil. They're dropping the nearly-completed BATGIRL as well as the Scooby-Do sequel film SCOOB: HIOLIDY HAUNT. Not only that, I read this morning that HBO Max quietly dropped a half dozen 'HBO Max Exclusive' films in order to not have to pay residuals to talent for low-performing content. You are not allowed to view links. Register or LoginThis _could_ be as simple as 1) cost-cutting and 2) new executive dumping old executives projects: a not-uncommon thing with Hollywood studios. Crazy, though, to dump $90m in a film and not even shift it to HBO Max.Will be curious to see what they do w/THE FLASH next June...
so house of dragons is next ?no citation, just wild speculation on my part
Slightly off-topic, whatever happened to the plans for merging HBO Max with Discovery+? I've pretty much gone through all the sciency-stuff in the library, and I'm kinda holding onto Discovery+ only because of the potential consolidation of the two services.
It's hard telling: that's certainly a very expensive series, but I think that's also an HBO series, not an HBO Max exclusive?
We'll find out in a few hours when they announce earnings and future plans. But I think it's already been mentioned that there will be sharing of content on the various services. Discovery content on HBO Max and CNN content on Discovery.More specifically, Batgirl is a made for steaming movie. That seems to be what's being cut, not a series like House of Dragons. I think the goal is to have all future DC movies be theatrical releases. Batgirl the streaming movie is not good enough for that. So in the end it's worth more to Time Warner to take it as a write down than release it in any form.I think this is a fall out of the various pandemic era strategies. Time Warner decided to release their films straight to streaming. Paramount held Top Gun until the pandemic lightened enough for theaters to reopen. Top Gun made a killing. Releasing straight to streaming didn't. It did boost subscribers but recent Netflix results have shown that adding subscribers for adding subscribers sake is not a good long term strategy. Those subscribers need to be monetized.So I think the strategy shift for TW is that movies should be released theatrically first, then eventually go to streaming. The old model. That's where the money is. The strategy for the last couple of years of direct to streaming isn't working. Thus the made for streaming movies are being cut.
BUT ALSO2. it _will_ be used as a $90 million tax write-off so it will essentially be shelved in perpetuity.
Reminder that "Peacemaker" was an HBO Max-exclusive, and short of making it both an HBO series that will stream on Max, regardless of what James Gunn thinks/says publicly right now I suspect there's nothing stopping WBD from pulling the plug on its 2nd season (that at best is in really early pre-production, and may not be anything more than some scripts-written)
In a twist, HBO Max played a role in why Prey didn't have a theatrical release. Prey is a pre-merger Fox film. By the merger agreement, if Disney released it in theaters then it would have been streamed on HBO Max. It seems Disney didn't want it streamed on their streaming competitor. So by foregoing the theatrical release and debuting it straight to streaming on Hulu, they were able to keep it off of HBO Max.
Unfortunately, like most streaming services, Hulu does not release numbers on individual products. They only say things like it's the best performing product ever. So it's hard to tell what that means. It's a good movie. I'm glad people are watching it.
The mogul said there’d now be a team that would create a “10-year” plan for DC, although who’s on that team is unclear.