The news that the newly-merged Warner Bros. Discovery was going to completely shelve the $90 million dollar Batgirl movie instead of releasing it raised quite a few eyebrows, but it looks like there’s other movies facing a sort of similar fate.
In fact, according to the folks over at Variety, the newly-merged company has been quietly culling other movies streaming on the service in an apparent effort to reduce costs. There have been at least six movies purged from HBO Max in the past few weeks.
Those movies include a sci-fi rom-com called Moonshoot starring Cole Sprouse and Lana Condor; a Melissa McCarthy movie about artificial intelligence called Superintelligence; an immigrant-based comedy starring Seth Rogen called An American Pickle; a remake of The Witches starring Anne Hathaway and Octavia Spencer; a heist pic called Locked Down also starring Anne Hathaway (tough week for her, good thing she’s a millionaire) and a drama from director Angel Manuel Soto called Charm City Kings.
Warner Bros. Discovery did not announce that the movies were going away; they were noticed by eagle-eyed Reddit users on a discussion post about Batgirl. Another casualty of the merger was a reboot of the movie House Party starring LeBron James. It was supposed to premiere on July 28, but is now not on the release calendar.
Because there’s no official announcement from the company the speculation is that some of the movies, like Batgirl and House Party, will make the company more money as tax write offs instead of releases. Warner Bros. Discovery is going to report Q2 earnings tomorrow (August 4). When Warner Bros. merged with Discovery it inherited about $43 billion in debt, so it makes sense that it’s looking to deal with that.
Before the merger, WarnerMedia touted its upcoming releases, including the aforementioned Moonshot and House Party.
