Recently, Warner Bros. has been at the center of controversy that stems from the cancellations and delays of many of their projects,  such as “Batgirl” or “The Amazing World of Gumball: The Movie”. This has been cause for a lot of concern amongst fans of Warner Bros. properties. 

The main reason these projects have been facing cancellation is due to the merging of Warner Bros. and Discovery Inc., to become Warner Bros. Discovery. The new ownership seeks to carve their own path, resulting in an attempt to claim a tax write off and to make back those funds– which in turn shows that they didn’t have faith in their movies and television shows to make enough profit. 

The first cancellation revealed was “Batgirl.” It was quite shocking since the movie had already finished filming and had even begun some test screenings. Things seemed to be rolling smoothly until Warner Bros. decided to suddenly cancel it.

Following this, projects began getting canceled left and right. “Batman: The Caped Crusader,” “Scoob!: Holiday Haunt,” ”The Amazing World of Gumball: The Movie” and several more have all been axed, as well as many shows getting discontinued such as “Young Justice” and just about every other DC related CW show. Along these lines, both “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” releases have been pushed back into 2023 as Shazam will be released in March and Aquaman in December. However, “The Flash” has yet to be canceled, despite it starring “Ezra Miller,” who has been all over the news for committing a number of crimes. Just adding insult to injury, HBO Max is also removing numerous shows and movies from its streaming platform as well. 

With all these cancellations and delays, Warner Bros. now only has two movies scheduled to release in 2022, those being “Don’t Worry Darling,” coming out on Sept. 23, and “Black Adam,” coming out Oct. 21. This means that in total, Warner Bros. will have released 6 movies this year. Compared to 2021, that is less than half of what they produced previously.

For now it seems that the cancellations have ceased, but multiple franchises and projects now are left in shambles. It truly is a shame since many of these seemed to have a lot of potential, so it’s a tragedy for them to never be released. But superiors at Warner Bros. just don’t see marketability in them, so as budgets are being cut, it’s inevitable that potentially great movies and shows are subsequently shelved.