New Report Reveals Which Streaming Service Cancels the Most Shows

One new report revealed which streaming service cancels the most shows and the results might surprise you. A collaborations between Illuminate and Variety Intelligence Platform says that Max is the streamer who ends up pulling the plug on shows the most often. Their report is called "The Show Must Go Off," and it takes a look at how often the heavy hitters in the streaming landscape opt to cut a show short. Between 2020 and last month, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Apple TV+, Max, Paramount+ and Peacock had a cancellation rate of 12%. That would only be 2% higher than broadcast TV. 

Some might be surprised to see Max at the top of the pile when it comes to cancelling shows. But, there's one reason the Warner Bros. Discovery streaming platform ends up taking the top spot. When David Zaslav took over the company, he tried to slash their debt by nixing shows left and right. All those cuts made for an outsized presence during the period from 2020 to 2023. Netflix actually came in 5th despite Internet cries about it cancelling everything. (But, there's some interesting notes about their 10.2% cancellation rate as their pool of shows is so much larger than some of their competition.) So, Max has the unfortunate distinction of being a grim reaper when it comes to original content.

David Zaslav Looks To Make More Franchises With Max

As previously stated, a lot of the Max output had been originals before David Zaslav assumed control of Warner Bros. Discovery. Now, the executive has set his sights on making more of the tenured franchises under the Warner Bros. umbrella. Zaslav would like to see more DC franchise movies, Lord of the Rings content, and Harry Potter movies. So, basically just stuff people recognize. Unfortunately for the new head of the company, The Flash just debuted to a sizable meh. And, the jury is still out on how successful a Harry Potter project without Daniel Radcliffe and company is truly going to be. (To say nothing of other controversies that will inevitably follow such a project with J.K. Rowling still attached in any capacity.)

"One of the other real strengths of Warner Bros. is we talk about the great IP that Warner Bros. owns," Zaslav said this year at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference. "But, for us, the challenge is that our content, our great IP — Harry Potter, DC, Lord of the Rings — that content has been underused."

"We think there's a lot of shareholder value in attaching a 10-year DC — a real plan around DC, bringing Harry Potter back to HBO for 10 consecutive years, doing multiple movies of Lord of the Rings," Zaslav continued.

Max Pours Cold Water on Streaming Movies

Over on the movie side of things, it isn't looking much better for Max viewers. While they'll still get all of Warner Bros. Discovery releases at some point, the rush of streaming exclusive movies is at an end. During CinemaCon, Zaslav reiterated that the days of making a streaming movie just for Max was over. Titles like Batgirl got cancelled and written off while other projects like Blue Beetle were made to go it alone in theaters. Despite the room for all kinds of cinematic expression, this is likely how its going to go for Max for a while now.

"We do not believe in streaming movies," Zaslav told exhibitors at CinemaCon. "Movies [in theaters] perform substantially better when we bring them to HBO Max than any of the direct-to-streaming movies. We said it nine months ago, and we said it six moths ago. We have never felt stronger about it... There's no purer form of storytelling than the motion picture business. … [WBD is] not in the retail business, not in cable, not broadband, not phone. We are just storytellers."

Are you surprised Max cancels the most movies? Let us know down in the comments!