On August 2nd, Warner Bros. made the unexpected decision to not release Batgirl on its streaming service, HBO Max, or in local theaters. The movie featured an all-star cast, well-seasoned directors and for all intents and purposes was ready to please audiences everywhere. However, its release happened to coincide with the massive conglomerate merger of Warner Bros., the Discovery Channel and AT&T. Warner Bros.’s new CEO was able to get a tax write-off for the movie’s production as a “purchase accounting” ploy, and the release was axed shortly after. If this had been a one-time blunder, this article would end here. But it doesn’t.
In the months following Batgirl’s demise HBO Max went on to entirely remove 68 different movies and TV shows, 37 of which were their own original content, without any prior notice to consumers, creators, or management. These shows included “Scoob! Holiday Haunt” and “Batman: Caped Crusader Series” well into their production, over 200 episodes of Sesame Street (yes, you heard that right), and 6 other “HBO Original” movies from its streaming roster.
What’s especially noteworthy about the removal of these titles is that they were done with zero notice to consumers or their creators, either a few short months after or well before their release to the public. Suddenly movies that you and I are paying to watch disappear without warning, and that these creators and animators have worked hard to bring to us. And the cost to hasn’t changed. One of these unfortunate creators, Leon Jihanian, stated on Twitter, “It’s gone. They’re all gone. Like, yeah, I can go on a pirate streaming web site to watch episodes, but my kids can’t. I made this for them.”
Creators like Jihanian who work for media production companies work hard on projects they love, but as employees who have signed contracts with their producers their original ideas, or intellectual property, belong to the company and not their creators. Companies are also subject in modern times to the mega-corporations that fund their activities, such as AT&T who has consumed over 98 different smaller companies since its inception. The CEO in this case was not motivated to preserve the IP within his ownership for their creative merit, but to remove them for his own monetary benefit.
We are accustomed to streaming services constantly adding and removing shows, cancelling them after one season or moving from one platform to another. As consumers, we pay to have access to good content and are drawn to original and creative ideas. The creators behind the scenes are the ones responsible for those ideas, and companies decide how to treat them and which ones they will compensate and give a platform to share their content. Our society tends to overlook these creators, and mega-corporations focused only on mitigating huge debts from business acquisition look at them more like machines than people.
Intellectual property is the most important modern commodity, making up the fabric of modern branding, entertainment, political campaigns and more. Billions of dollars are spent every year, and careers are made and fall apart based on who owns what ideas. This tax stunt by HBO Max’s higher-ups should make us realize that we don’t truly own anything digital, and what really matters most is how digital media is created and affects our idea of reality.
Creators like Jihanian and the creators of Batgirl must balance their creative dreams with appeasing their employers or settle for sharing their content themselves through less effective distribution methods and hope they reach the audience they want. We live in a post-parenthetical era where remix and recycling of old ideas is the norm, and thus maintaining copyright and intellectual property ownership is a high priority for content creators.
We as consumers in an economy that relies equally on remix and original, creative idea-making should do our part to support creators who cannot rely on their own employers to honor the time and effort put into making them content. In a capitalist environment where investors come first and the people at the top share a bottomless desire for expansion, we should acknowledge that we cannot truly “own” what we buy online. I’m not saying you should pirate those shows that HBO Max turned into a tax break (that would be illegal…), but I am saying that you have power as a consumer to choose what to watch and invest your time and money into.