The Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition has seen its fair share of drama ever since the deal first closed, with a high-profile movie like Batgirl, featuring the return of Michael Keaton’s Batman, being yanked while it was in post. However, it’s been the unceremonious yanking of entire shows off the HBO Max platform—poof! as if they’d never existed—that has fans in an uproar, and Westworld and The Nevers are two of the latest casualties.
Deadline reports Westworld and The Nevers are being removed from HBO Max as part of Warner Bros. Discovery’s latest moves to save money. Both are now sitting alongside shows like Minx, which was renewed only to be cancelled and shelved indefinitely. However, Deadline suspects Westworld and The Nevers are likely to appear on other company platforms. For instance, it’s possible Westworld and The Nevers will be offered in the FAST channel space, which Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has expressed an interest in. Still, this leaves fans in an ugly position. Not only do they not get the resolution to shows they’ve poured years into watching - such as the final Westworld season having many unanswered questions that would have been resolved by the fifth season the creators had already been contracted for - they don’t know if they’ll ever get to see their favorite shows again, especially if they haven’t been released on some permanent form of ownership such as a DVD or Blu-ray.
These decisions mean a big change for the industry and the consumer since they indicate a breach of trust not seen in the days since the VHS became common and people started buying their favorite shows and movies in some rewatchable format. On the industry side, the notion of things no longer being available was the way Hollywood ran for years. People who missed a show during the initial airing maybe, if it were popular, got to see summer returns. Some up and disappeared after the initial airing. Movies were the same way; the accepted method for watching something again was going back to the theater over and over.
This started changing when people were offered the ability to buy their own copies for home viewing. Where the Warner Bros. Discovery situation differs is the studio is not only yanking old shows and movies but ones in post-production or even finished and canceling renewals despite having already signed the contracts for the next season. It’s a level of disrespect unheard of in the industry and a slap in the face to all—creatives, actors, and fans—involved.
It’s also a way to gut actor’s residuals, killing the earnings of midline performers who didn’t get big initial paychecks, as Variety notes. Now with shows like Westworld and The Nevers gone, possibly forever, fans have a long hard think ahead of them about what the consumer relationship will look like with streaming services going forward.
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Source: Deadline
