It hasn’t been the best couple years for Looney Tunes fans. The last big-screen film featuring the venerable cartoon characters was Space Jam: A New Legacy which was … horrible. The so-called Looney Tunes Cartoons series of modern shorts on HBO Max (and later just Max) were good, but they concluded production last year. And what was supposed to be the next movie for the brand, Coyote vs. Acme, has been shelved, perhaps forever, and according to recent reports is in danger of being permanently deleted so Warner Bros. Discovery can take a tax write-off on the project.
Plus there was also a minor kerfuffle when it appeared late last year that many Looney Tunes shorts were being removed from Max entirely, and perhaps forever — which Max later claimed was an error in a press release.
So make of this what you will: In their latest press blast announcing the new titles coming to Max, the company noted that they will be adding “more than 130 episodes of Looney Tunes” to the service next month. The new cartoons include “fan-favorites like ‘Rabbit Fire,’ ‘Duck Amuck,’ ‘A Wild Hare,’ which featured Bugs Bunny for the first time, and ‘Porky’s Duck Hunt,’ the first appearance of Daffy Duck, as well as ‘One Froggy Evening’ and ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’”
READ MORE: The New Looney Tunes Movie May Be Permanently Deleted
That’ the good news. The bad news is that Max also announced that “as these episodes arrive on Max, approximately 130 other episodes will leave the platform.” They did not specify which 130 shorts would be leaving Max.
I would assume that Max made this announcement so that when 130 Looney Tunes cartoons randomly disappeared in March fans didn’t freak out about it (and the company could preemptively say they were adding more Looney Tunes cartoons at the same time).
The main takeaway here, as it is anytime the libraries of these streaming services get shifted in a major way, is that a subscription can never take the place of physical media you own forever. It may not be fashionable for a lot of people to buy Blu-rays or DVDs anymore, but if you own classic Looney Tunes in some kind of physical form, it doesn’t matter what Max does to its library.
The only thing you control when you subscribe to these services is what you pay and for how long. Beyond that, there’s nothing you can do about what they offer and for how long. And they can (and often do!) yank things down, sometimes permanently, with very little notice.
The new Looney Tunes titles will be coming — and the old ones will be leaving — on March 1.