Latest HBO Max cancellations includes Batman: Caped Crusader

It’s a day that ends in a Y, which means it’s time for Warner Bros. Discover to kill off some more projects that were already in development for HBO Max, and—wow, would you believe this?—they’re all animated. Is David Zaslav actually Who Framed Roger Rabbit villain Judge Doom? Because this guy has a real grudge against cartoons.

The latest batch of HBO Max originals getting unjustly killed before their time (according to Variety) are Merry Little Batman, The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical, Did Do Do That To The Holidays: A Steve Urkel Story, The Amazing World Of Gumball: The Movie, and Batman: The Caped Crusader. Some of those haven’t been too heavily publicized until now, but Caped Crusader was as high-profile as animated projects get.

Produced by J.J. Abrams, The Batman director Matt Reeves, and Batman: The Animated Series co-creator Bruce Timm, the series was being positioned as a spiritual successor to Batman: TAS that would’ve been a darker, more mature, noir-inspired Batman show—basically the exact thing that ‘90s kids have been dying for since Batman: TAS went off the air. There may be some hope, though: According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit, the project is “not canceled” but simply is “not going to stream on HBO Max.” Kit says it’s “deep in production” and that it “will show up somewhere.”

Assuming that’s true, it’s full-on wild that a show about Batman with big-name people involved wouldn’t stream on the service that’s owned by the company that owns Batman. Say what you will about Disney gobbling up all of American pop culture, but it would never pass up 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’ve gotta do the Squadron Supreme at some point, right?

As fun as that would be, the most likely destination for Caped Crusader would be Cartoon Network, which was also involved in the development of the show alongside HBO Max when it was first announced. Still, if something were going to air on regular TV, wouldn’t it be just as easy to also put it on the streaming service owned by the same people? Eh, what do we know? We’re not the clearly very competent people making decisions to unceremoniously throw art in the garbage at Warner Bros. Discovery. (And by “art,” we mean Did I Do That To The Holidays: A Steve Urkel Story.)