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Six animated series dropped at HBO Max as WBD cuts back kids and family

Batman: Caped Crusader and five other animated projects have been dropped by HBO Max as parent company Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) continues to downsize its kids and family offering.

HBO Max’s Batman: Caped Crusader

Also cancelled by the streaming service were The Amazing World of Gumball: The Movie, Merry Little Batman, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, Did I Do That to The Holidays: A Steve Urkel Story and Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical.

While none of the projects will air on HBO Max, production on all six will continue and they will be shopped to other platforms. Each of the projects is produced through Warner Bros Animation, except for The Amazing Word of Gumball, which is from Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe.

Batman: Caped Crusader, which counted JJ Abrams among its executive producers, received a straight-to-series order last year.

News of the cancellations comes three weeks after HBO Max said that “live-action kids and family programming will not be part of our programming focus in the immediate future.”

The content cuts have continued to deepen since, with the streamer last week confirming it was removing more than 30 kids and factual titles, in addition to removing around 200 older episodes of Sesame Street.

On the personnel front, around 70 positions were eliminated last week as several teams under chief content officer Casey Bloys were restructured.

The cuts have continued to come thick and fast this week, with WBD-owned OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network cutting four positions including head of programming Mary Beth Cunin. Chief marketing officer Jennifer Giddens, general counsel Karen Grant-Selma and comms chief Nicole Nichols also left the network.

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