Forum - View topicINTEREST: GameRant: Warner Bros. Discovery Has No Plans To Cut Toonami
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6360 |
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Guess that’s a good thing, but I’m presume they’re also not putting any money into it either.
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DumbWizard4
Posts: 8 |
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Why not? If he was serious about slashing spending to make them profitable they might as well. Not to be disrespectful or funny in regards to Toonami but how many people still actually watch it?
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thepepin
Posts: 69 |
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Good grief, there are no "Warner Bros upheavals." This really is much ado about nothing; people freaking out because the Batgirl movie got cancelled. The folks going nuts over that are leaving out some key details: "Batgirl" was part of what was intended to be a Margot Robbie - produced franchise launched by the Birds of Prey film from 2020. The problem: Birds of Prey lost at least $50 million due to its producing/writing/directing team settling on the brilliant strategy of making and marketing the film to appeal to everybody but comic book and action fans. Because of this the original plan for a "Gotham City Sirens" cinematic universe - which was to be 3 theatrical Birds of Prey and 3 theatrical Harley Quinn films at minimum plus films for Batgirl, Catwoman, Black Canary, Poison Ivy etc. that were going to be theatrical and streaming films - were pulled. After Suicide Squad - which was also supposed to heavily rely on Harley Quinn's "popularity" - also tanked, no one is even talking about Harley Quinn's future in the DC movies or future DC projects from her production company. Everyone is talking about her "Barbie" movie and her taking over the lead in the Pirates of the Caribbean reboot instead.
WB is continuing with the Black Canary film because it is still in development and as a result can actually be reshaped into a film that comic book, action and general audiences - again, the very people that Birds of Prey and Batgirl were driving off on purpose in favor of ... who exactly? who knows you will have to ask them - will want to see. The rest of the stuff that WB is pulling from HBO Max is ... again this is not being mentioned ... shows that nobody was watching. Examples: "Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart", which Cartoon Network allegedly "renewed" but went 2 years without ever giving them a budget to do season 2. "Young Justice" which was cancelled by Cartoon Network and then cancelled by Netflix and was given a third shot on HBO Max to horrible ratings (not all "fan campaigns" should succeed). Other stuff: "Young Ellen" which was a kids' series about the childhood of daytime talkshow host Ellen DeGeneres and A TON of CalArts style stuff like "Summer Camp Island" and "Aquaman: King of Atlantis" made by people who apparently believe that "Steven Universe" was actually popular (it wasn't ... Cartoon Network lost money on it for 5 seasons because it was critically acclaimed and because of Rebecca Sugar's legendary status there). Some of the shows culled by HBO Max had episodes that went unwatched for an entire calendar year. Because of people ignoring actual facts because they are inconvenient to whatever narrative they are spinning, nonsense has been circulating about how the new WB is hostile to diversity (never mind they are trying their level best to save a "Flash" movie with an LGBT lead and race-swapped lead actress AND are going full speed ahead with Dwayne Johnson superhero movies that have a ton of race-swapped characters) because they are "pandering to middle America" (the same "middle America" that gave BLACK PANTHER $700 million in box office) and how they have "a war on animation." Nah. They are just ditching poorly conceived projects that never made WB money. The last regime was too cowardly to pull the plug on this nonsense, and as a result WB is $50 billion in debt. It would take 50 hits the scale of Titanic, Avatar, Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Avengers to pay that off. Right now WB's current ownership is under pressure to show that they can cut $3 billion off WB's annual operating costs in a year. If they can't, the lenders are going to downgrade WB. So as a part of this, WB is axing all the stuff that has no chance of making them money. This will not include Adult Swim and Toonami. Adult Swim is (mostly) cheaply produced stuff that takes the place of reruns and infomercials. It has made them money that they wouldn't otherwise get for 20 years and isn't going anywhere. Toonami is a different case because it has waxed and waned over the years, but that is still (mostly) stuff that they only need to pay cheap licensing fees for and censor a little bit. So for now it is also cheap programming that people watch means that it makes money. In the past they got rid of Toonami because they had better options to replace it with. But as Cartoon Network has spent the last 7-8 years driving off their core audience (which was 5-15 year old males to counterprogram Disney Channel and Nickelodeon whose main target audience is young females) with stuff like what was mentioned above that isn't the case: almost as many American kids watch anime as domestic programming these days so there really isn't anything that they could put on that would beat it. Well that is not quite true: they COULD go back to ACTUALLY GOOD DC cartoons like The Batman and Justice League. But the regime that ran up the $50 billion in debt with their absolute determination to keep developing shows without an audience had no interest in it. |
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Los Nido
Posts: 132 |
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I remember the furor back when The Batman came out initially because it was going for that more animeish Teen Titans style in its designs and direction. In retrospect, yes, it was better than all the stuff being put out these days, but it's just funny to remember the outrage back then when it first came out. Same with how people had a kneejerk reaction to Brave and the Bold initially following Justice League for being too silly but it ended up being an amazing cartoon that was basically Batman: The Animated Series for Silver Age DC comics and a perfect companion to Timm and Dini's works. Unfortunate I have read that a lot of focus testing says that kids today just flat out to not enjoy action cartoons anymore. They prefer anime. As nice as it would be to see some awesome DC cartoons that harken back to the old days, it seems unlikely in todays market. It's really hard to compete with anime now compared to back during the 90s and early 2000s. Anime streaming compeltely dominates that demographic. To be fair, we saw it even back during the tail end of the 2000s when networks like Fox Kids/4KidsT/FoxBox started axing their original programming and started airing more anime and foreign animation. |
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Sakurafire_
Posts: 67 |
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This post was much ado about nothing. You must be really fun at parties, dude. Two seriously effed media companies merged. They're going with the safe bets that likely won't make money and don't feel like paying residuals to the animator's unions (re: animator's healthcare). Almost no one wants rehashes of the 22 minute long commercials you watched as a kid. It's time to move on. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4632 Location: New York |
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Toonami’s been in something of a downward spiral for a while now, albeit one that’s less their fault and more the fault of the tastes of the anime consumer going towards streaming and less companies wanting to do business with them. It doesn’t help that Toonami’s head of programming heavily dislikes streaming and keeps claiming linear television is superior which puts him at odds with companies that use the streaming platforms as their centerpiece.
Still at the end of the day it comes down to numbers. If it’s cheaper to run than replace, it keeps running. |
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kuma991
Posts: 106 |
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I mean, with all the recent cuts and cancellations, I'm surprised they didn't somehow cancel my existence as a budget cut.
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Aura Ichadora
 Posts: 2305 Location: In front of my computer |
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I'm very glad that Toonami isn't going away anytime soon, although I still worry for the block in general. They do have some shows incoming down the pipe (Housing Complex C, the new FLCL sequels, Uzumaki, the Rick & Morty anime), which is very awesome and I look forward to it. But it's the issues with getting other series onto the block which makes me concern. Between budget issues, Sony holding back a lot of their licenses and preventing Toonami to get them (making folks fear we may not see new seasons of previously aired shows on the block), some series being locked away in Netflix Jail (namely just looking at JoJo Part 6), and uncertainty if other partnerships will be allowed to continue in the future (namely the relationship between them and Sentai, due to AMC's acquisition), I worry about how many more dubbed series that aren't their own projects and/or are Adult Swim projects (i.e. Primal, Ballmasterz 9000, Gemusetto Machu Picchu) they're going to be able to get. I'm extremely curious come October/November if Toonami will be able to air MHA S6, because that had been one of the block's biggest shows, as well as when their current new shows (Primal, Yashahime S2, and Lupin the 3rd Part 6) end and how soon we'll seen announced replacements. Things may change if the block isn't able to give fans more to watch besides repeats or "new" premiers of One Piece and Shippuden, which currently takes up more than half of the block, and that's what I have concerns with. |
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Wyvern
 Posts: 1604 |
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It truly is pathetic that Warner Bros' reputation has become so ruined that they're getting headlines for NOT cancelling something.
Did you make this up? Because the Batgirl movie was fully funded, filmed, and completed AFTER Birds of Prey had already left theaters. Birds of Prey released in February 2020; Batgirl began filming in November 2021. If this cancellation had anything to do with the box office returns for Birds of Prey, Batgirl would have been cancelled in 2020, before a single scene was even filmed. Instead they filmed the entire movie, at a cost of $70 million, then just decided no one would ever get to see it.
So? Other streaming services cancel unpopular original shows all the time, but they don't remove them from the service, essentially rendering them impossible for anyone to legally watch ever again. That's just shortsighted and stupid, for several reasons. First, people subscribe to streaming services for volume of content, and being the streamer who is famous for REMOVING content is a terrible PR move. Second, entertainment history is full of shows that "nobody was watching" which went on to become massive hits later on. "Nobody was watching" Evangelion when it first came out. "Nobody was watching" Cowboy Bebop when it first came out. Same for Gundam, or Star Trek, or even Seinfeld. These shows are all massive franchises now, because no one was foolish enough to needlessly remove them from the airwaves and people caught on to them via repeats. Every show HBO Max killed had the potential to be huge once people discovered it. Now no one will. Absolutely idiotic. I don't care how big your debt is, killing potential franchises when it costs next to nothing to keep them on your service (remember, all these shows are WB property and production had already been fully paid for) is terrible business. Which is likely why WB/Discovery has lost over $20 billion in market value since they announced these shows were to be removed. MOST importantly, as animator Matt Braly points out in this excellent Twitter thread: Artists should not be punished for the failures of the marketing department. If "nobody is watching" a show, that's HBO Max's fault for not getting people interested in watching the show. They have people who they pay millions of dollars to get people interested in their content! If their shows aren't getting enough viewers, then replace the ad execs who aren't doing their jobs. Don't punish artists who absolutely did what they were hired to do.
HBO Max had a Batman show in development, actually. It was from the same creators who made Batman: The Animated Series in the 90's. They cancelled that, too. So much for "actually good DC cartoons!" |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1254 |
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Sadly here in Latin America Toonami is leaving Cartoon Network. To be precise, Toonami left Cartoon Network Latin America in the late 2000s but a couple of years ago CN LA brought it back after they made a deal with Crunchyroll to premiere and air some anime like Dr. Stone and Mob Psycho in Neutral Spanish alongside some mainstays like DB Super. Many fans were happy, there were some cuts, though some people were surprised they left some profanities. Still, after CR was acquired by Sony people thought the block will vanish but this year they premiered the Neutral Spanish dubs for Eizouken and Laid-back Camp. However it seems like CN Latin America president does not think anime fits its current programming, and Warner Channel Latin America began airing a block called Wánime with shows like Dragon Ball, Yashahime, Naruto/Boruto, among others and it was a huge rating success, so probably WB/Turner will air all anime content there.
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OjaruFan2
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Why does he dislike streaming?
What cuts did they do? |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1254 |
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What cuts did they do?[/quote] In Mob Psycho they censored the use of some words like "Porn" and "Pervert", they also cut some suggestive and violent scenes. But curiously they left the spanish equivalent of the word "Shit" in one episode, probably the first time that a profanity was spoken in Cartoon Network Latin America. While in Laid-Back Camp they cut the alcohol references. All of this was kind of dumb considering the block aired after midnight, but in my opinion as someone who grew up watching Cartoon Network LA since the late 90s, I think the standards are stricter that 20 or 15 years ago, even CN original shows like Regular Show and Adventure Time got some scenes cut in Latin America, though only some of the "cruder" jokes, luckily all the LGBT content in shows like Steven Universe, Clarence and Craig of the Creek was left intact. |
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light turner
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Actually awhile back Bruce Timm said in an interview they were forced to add diversity and other things to the show. I think the higher ups will still mandate those kinds of things no matter even if Timm is in charge. But maybe the shuffling around is a sign of things changing? |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8503 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I mostly just watch Toonami for the community aspect, watching with other people as they react on the internet. I can watch Lupin III Part VI on my own if I wanted to.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6360 |
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People getting laid off, creators losing out on royalties, the company’s stock tanking, & cancellation of projects even those already with their principal filmography finished. Is nothing?
Yeah remember when Zack Snyder made BvS to appeal to comic book and action fans? Or how about both Suicide Squad films? Good times. FYI the problems with Birds Of Prey wasn’t the D word or the C word. Likely factor was it’s didn’t have a strong script.
Your facts and details are wrong. YJ run on CN had problems with it’s scheduling the show originally aired Friday nights which even for a cable network is not a good slot. With encores running on Saturday mornings and even during one point of it’s run went on hiatus for like 6 months for no reason. When you do shit like that good chance you’re going to make it hard to retain viewership. All that said according to Weissman the actual reason the show was cancelled is that the show’s funding was dependent upon toy sales which of course didn’t do too good during the show’s run on CN. Show also never aired on Netflix it was on DC Universe which was gobbled up by HBO Max which is now comically being merged with Discovery’s app. So it was never cancelled from Netflix (which it never aired on primarily) or DC Universe. Nor was it cancelled cause it was a bad show that no one was watching.
You don’t give 5 seasons, a movie, a 20 episode limited series to a show that’s not popular.
You’re doing this very thing though. Outside of blatant trolling though I can’t figure out why.
They’re trying to save a movie whose white lead has pretty much spent the last two years or so being a PR disaster. But cancelled an already filmed movie with a Hispanic lead for a simple tax write off. People had valid reason at the time to be worried about the potential cancellation of Blue Beetle. Even if WBD reasons weren’t for what they seemed like it on the surface.
……Middle America is made up of substantial number of white people a fraction of whom are the ones that have spent the last decade complaining about diversity and acceptance of LGBTQ individuals. And now are trying to ban books or curriculums that teach about slavery, the holocaust, Jim Crow America and other things that have been on library shelves and apart of school lessons for years because it makes their kids imaginary and real feel bad /s. Bad bad take.
If these ideas are simply concepts then how can you say they never made money if they in the case of Batgirl or the Scoob follow up were never given a chance to make money in theaters due to them being canceled?
And yet with that debt the merger still happened?
You do know that a few years ago there was a Justice League cartoon called Justice League Action right? Not to mention the fact that Batman has a web series and was on the cusp of getting a new animated series on HBO Max right? And this on top of the numerous straight to DVD/Streaming movies that have been coming out the last decade and a half featuring those characters? You were so busy dropping dubious and factually wrong statements that you apparently forgot your history.
Might wanna cite your information Because this would make no sense given whose attached to the project. That and you can’t force diversity into a work. Despite how a very few number of people selectively seem to think this is a thing. Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Tue Aug 30, 2022 1:18 am; edited 6 times in total |
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