PART FIVE:
(Home) Box Office Bunny
(The 2020s)

When the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2020, there was no way to imagine the nightmarish world everyone would soon be plunged into. No thoughts of global pandemics, of travel bans, of killer cops and nationwide protests, or of bitter presidential elections. All was calm and serene...and in fact, Warner Bros. was set to do something that for decades had seemed unthinkable to them: they were going to celebrate Bugs Bunny's birthday!

To commemorate Bugs's eightieth birthday, a special one-minute piece of animation titled Happy Birthday Bugs Bunny! was produced by the crew of HBO Max's upcoming Looney Tunes Cartoons series. It would premiere on the WB Kids YouTube channel in July.

Despite the fact that anyone with a computer could easily look up release info on any film known to man, for the longest time Warner Bros. took great pains to not recognize the ages or anniversaries of their classic cartoon characters. Part of it was that the Time Warner of yesteryear didn't want their animated properties to be perceived as "old" (and therefore, unmarketable to children), while the corporation's legal department was terrified that acknowledging a character's debut would open the door to allow people to try to figure out when certain films or depictions could potentially enter the public domain. So anything specifying an exact year in relation to film release or character creation was not allowed to be mentioned anywhere, whether it was a DVD commentary, special-feature documentary, or any kind of official writing about the shorts. The last time Warner Bros. had outwardly celebrated a character's birthday was for Marvin the Martian's fiftieth...in 1998.

And yet, this constant tip-toeing around release dates and ages seemed to only apply to the Looney Tunes characters. Warner Bros. meanwhile had no problem commemorating the anniversaries of such other "family" properties as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Scooby-Doo, and The Wizard of Oz. In 2010 Warner Home Video went ahead and released the Tom & Jerry Deluxe Anniversary Collection to honor the pair's seventieth. Heck, even crosstown rival Disney, the king of copyright paranoia, released an anniversary Blu-ray in 2018 with Celebrating Mickey, complete with a "90 Years of Magic" logo right on the cover.

But whatever the reason or catalyst was, the AT&T-rechristened WarnerMedia was ready to again celebrate not only Bugs Bunny's birthday but also the unbelievable ninetieth anniversary of the Looney Tunes franchise! It wasn't going to be as inescapable as the mass-media extravaganza was for Bugs's fiftieth in 1990, but Warner was nevertheless taking long-unprecedented steps. A new Bugs anniversary logo was cobbled together, a series of newly produced shorts were set to make their debut, and a handful of licensed products were going to tie into the birthday mini-bonanza.

Warner Home Video was ready to do its part, too. In January a variety of older titles were fitted with a plastic ninetieth anniversary o-sleeve to fit over the normal DVD cases. A number of new releases were also planned for throughout the year, including something that even surpassed the label's own expectations!

Apart from Bugs, Warner was making video plans of a totally different kind, as in mid-January the studio signed a ten-year deal to share distribution with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Beginning in 2021, a new domestic distribution arm was to be formed by the two studios and headed by Universal executive Eddie Cunningham, with foreign distribution split between the two. Though it certainly wasn't the first time Warner Home Entertainment had formed a pact with a rival studio--and on the surface it seemed no different from past collaborations with MGM and Paramount--nobody outside the studio could possibly foresee how the Universal deal was going to rock Warner's label to its very core.

Speaking of rocks, mid-January also saw a monumental announcement from Warner Archive, as they were set to release the long-awaited, long-requested, and long-thought-impossible first volume of Tex Avery MGM cartoons on disc--specifically via an absurd teaser video in which a grumbling Archive employee sets a packaged Avery Blu-ray onto his desk, only for it to be crushed by a CGI boulder. Scheduled for February 18, Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1 was going to present nineteen assorted, non-chronological Avery cartoons all newly remastered from 4K resolution scans.

The release of a dedicated Avery disc collection was not only a dream come true for classic animation fans but also a passion project for many at Warner Home Video including the one and only George Feltenstein, who had compiled the old Tex Avery's Screwball Classics VHS collections for MGM Home Video. And though a complete Droopy collection was released on DVD back in 2007, any attempt to release further Avery-centric compilations was always met with strong resistance from Warner Home Video, which simply wasn't convinced that the general public would buy a set based solely on a cartoon director's name. Meanwhile, a number of Tex Avery single discs and boxed sets found wide release across Europe, where the director had always enjoyed a large and dedicated following among film buffs and scholars. But for North America, it was always a firm "nuh-uh" from Warner Home Video. But thankfully, the success of the Archive's Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s Blu-rays proved that there was finally a viable, and more importantly cost-effective, model in place to make similar collections of other classic animation properties--and it was high time to give such attention to the "King of Cartoons."

But while fans waited for their Tex fix, Warner Archive released something more for the Looney completist with Duck Dodgers: The Complete Third Season, finishing off the satiric Cartoon Network show. While maybe not as high on anyone's wish list as, say, an actual new Looney Tunes shorts compilation, it did however mark the first time a Looney Tunes television series was being offered through Warner Archive--and it wouldn't be the last.

As if something new just had to be paired with something old and totally unnecessary, on the same day as Duck Dodgers normal Warner Home Video released 4 Kid Favorites: Looney Tunes Movies. Yet another reshuffling and rehashing of previously released content, this time The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island, Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, and Rabbits Run were all squashed onto just two discs. Any special features from the movies' original single-disc releases, however, were gone.

New but almost equally unnecessary were Warner's February offerings, starting with the Looney Tunes Parodies Collection. The first newly assembled shorts compilation in well over a year (or, if one ignored the Stars of Space Jam discs, then in nearly five years), Warner Home Video went so far as to promote it as their official kick-off "to celebrate the anniversaries of Looney Tunes (90th) and Bugs Bunny (80th)." And considering how spoof-focused many of the classic Looney Tunes cartoons were, it seemed as if someone's heart was in the right place.

But unfortunately, where the DVD excelled in concept it failed in execution. Despite starting with the likes of I Love to Singa and Hollywood Steps Out, very little thought was put into what was in fact considered a "parody." Rabbit Hood, Rabbit of Seville, Carrotblanca, and What's Opera, Doc? were included (as was the Looney Tunes Show episode "Super Rabbit" as opposed to the classic cartoon of the same name), but there was no trace of any of the studio's classic gangster spoofs, western pictures, or even TV parodies--and the collection was completely devoid of any of Chuck Jones's 1950s Daffy cartoons, which almost always poked fun at specific movie genres. Instead, the criteria for inclusion seemed more to be whether the title of a cartoon sounded like a parody: Little Red Riding Rabbit, Apes of Wrath, the entire 1978 TV special How Bugs Bunny Won the West, and an uncomfortable amount of the later revival shorts like Chariots of Fur, Pullet Surprise, Little Go Beep, From Hare to Eternity, and Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas. In many cases, one had to question whether the disc's producer knew the difference between a parody and a pun.

If there was any silver lining in this mixed bag it was that Apes of Wrath was again shown in full screen, indicating that Warner Home Video had once and for all washed their hands of the cropped widescreen versions they put on the first two Looney Tunes Super Stars DVDs. More importantly was the debut of three new cartoons to DVD: Jack-Wabbit and the Beanstalk, Rabbitson Crusoe, and even the cheater clip-show Hare-abian Nights--but alas, and perhaps predictably, all three were unremastered and just broadcast copies. Considering they consisted of the only "new" content on a product that nevertheless still retailed for nearly twenty dollars (in other words, this wasn't a "budget" or dump-bin release), the lack of wanting to spend the money to remaster them was concerning.

The label's indifference was reiterated a couple of weeks later with the release of the 1980 TV special Daffy Duck's Easter Egg-citement. Previously available as a bonus feature on both the Golden Collection Volume Six and The Essential Daffy Duck, this DVD at least marked the program's first stand-alone release since its original VHS issue back in 1992. Bonus features were small but appropriate: the classic cartoons Easter Yeggs and Golden Yeggs. But again, all repeated material when resources could have been better spent elsewhere. Thankfully, on that same day, Warner Archive released their Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1 Blu-ray to unanimous critical acclaim. A second volume was already in the works.

But whatever cheers or jeers a Warner cartoon release received would be eclipsed by an ongoing real-world crisis about to put everything to a screeching halt. As the United States struggled with the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, California was particularly hit hard. Coronavirus cases and deaths were rapidly rising county by county, with many instituting county-wide lockdowns to prevent further spread and infections. By March 19 governor Gavin Newsom had had enough and announced a statewide shelter-in-place order. Businesses throughout California were immediately shut down and employees were sent home, Warner Bros. included. Even though about 40 percent of the state's workforce was able to adapt to the change with little problem, and even some divisions of the studio were able to operate remotely from home, one place where such an option was simply impossible was Motion Picture Imaging, the in-house post-production facility that handles everything for the company's film assets from color correction to full-scale remastering. With MPI down for the count, Warner Home Video and especially Warner Archive's release schedule could be greatly affected.

Fortunately, and perhaps in true Warner fashion, there was still a backlog of product to release. And in even truer Warner Home Video fashion, when it came to Looney Tunes that backlog amounted to the barest minimal effort...for now.

In mid-April Warner released its "big" DVD release for Bugs's birthday, and from top to bottom it was perhaps the label's laziest work ever. Christened the Bugs Bunny Golden Carrot Collection--itself a title the studio had been trying to find a home for since 2002--the $29.98, five-disc set boasted seventy-four cartoons, promising on the back cover to have "collected the best shorts the wisecracking hare has to offer." But unfortunately, what those cartoons actually were would be a mystery until one actually bought the set. All the back cover could offer was a cryptic warning: "All of the shorts included in this collection were previously released as part of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection."

And even with that preface, the set was a disappointment. Instead of taking all of the Bugs cartoons across all six Golden Collection volumes and recompiling them, Warner merely repeated the first discs from the first five boxed sets in the series--which were almost always all-Bugs collections. The lone exception to this was on Golden Collection Volume Five, where the first disc was split between Bugs and Daffy cartoons. The discs were carried over onto this new set as-is, including seven Daffy shorts in which Bugs doesn't appear whatsoever. So Warner couldn't even deliver on its front-cover promise of containing seventy-four Bugs Bunny cartoons on his own birthday collection.

But this also meant that key Bugs shorts found elsewhere on the various Golden Collection sets were not included. So no Rabbit Fire or A Corny Concerto or The Old Grey Hare or Show Biz Bugs or What's Opera, Doc?, etc. Certainly any serious Looney Tunes completist would already have had these and others in their collection, but for the casual buyer this new set was hardly the one-and-done best-of the label was pushing it to be.

Carrying over the Golden Collection discs verbatim also allowed for an additional annoyance, as all of the miscellaneous extra features on each disc went along for the ride. Informative extras are always a good thing, but because of the way the individual Golden Collection volumes were originally programmed, some longer bonus material was occasionally split across multiple discs. So now here on this Golden Carrot Collection viewers were only getting half of the Boys from Termite Terrace documentary, half of Bugs Bunny Superstar, half of the Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes All-Star 50th Anniversary TV special, etc. It all amounted to a rather needless release. Reviewers on Amazon eventually recommended it mostly for Bugs Bunny binge-watching, but Warner Bros. was about to offer a better, quicker way to scratch even that itch.

The prospect of a Warner-owned streaming platform in the style of Netflix or Hulu had always seemed like more of a pipe dream than anything that could realistically happen. Despite the vastness of the studio's library and the possibilities for such an idea, for whatever reason it always seemed like there were too many roadblocks getting in the way. Considering that the goal all along was to marry content with telecommunications, even the acquisition by AT&T did little to give anyone solid hope. The various on-demand services run by Warner networks like Cartoon Network and HBO were adequate but nothing revolutionary--and certainly nothing that suggested anything permanent. The quiet demise of past subscription services like Warner Archive Instant and Turner Classic Movies' FilmStruck indicated that anything regarding streaming was at the whims of some faceless Warner management.

But work was indeed being done, with sister AT&T subsidiary Otter Media trying to develop a service aiming to rival the likes of Netflix et al. Other divisions at WarnerMedia were being redirected, consolidated, or shut down altogether to get the project going, with operations at Adult Swim and DC Universe hit the hardest. To name the new service, WarnerMedia looked to the TV brand that gave the company global recognition, acclaim, success, and must-see buzz with Game of Thrones: HBO. And with a worldwide pandemic keeping a large percentage of the population at home, the stage was being set to unleash the new service on a captive audience. HBO Max would debut on May 27.

Hot on the heels of last November's epic launch of Disney+, AT&T was hoping HBO Max would one-up the House of Mouse by offering viewers more than just All Things Warner. All current and most former HBO programming was available, including whatever feature films had been licensed to air on the cable channels. Sesame Workshop not only made HBO Max the new home for original episodes of Sesame Street but would also develop new related programming with the characters. The BBC signed a deal to make HBO Max the exclusive streaming home to its iconic Doctor Who franchise (or at least the reboot version). But Warner properties were still front and center--DC Comics, Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim were all given dedicated landing hubs, as were partner companies such as Studio Ghibli and Crunchyroll. And buried on the home page, off to the side, was one particular hub icon: Looney Tunes.

At first glance, the initial offerings in HBO Max's Looney Tunes section seemed paltry--mostly runs of The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries and Cartoon's Network's The Looney Tunes Show. But there were also classic Looney Tunes shorts present; not a large amount, but enough to quench a thirst. Unlike the more family-friendly structure of Cartoon Network's Boomerang app, the theatrical cartoons were categorized chronologically in "seasons" in order to better frame them in a historical context. And also unlike the whatever-version-is-available mixed-bag approach on Boomerang, HBO Max only featured remastered HD copies, usually taken from existing Blu-rays.

But key to HBO Max's Looney Tunes hub was one of the service's exclusive "Max Originals," a brand new series of shorts intended to carry on the legacy of the original Warner Bros. cartoon studio. Packaged under the banner Looney Tunes Cartoons, ten half-hour episodes debuted, each with an assortment of newly produced cartoons that had been in the works for the last couple of years.

With every possible genre and type of entertainment covered, it seemed as if the only thing HBO Max was missing was an actual audience. Even with the service bundled into existing AT&T packages--including those by subsidiary DirecTV--by the end of July only four million subscribers had signed up, a far cry from the one-day ten million who had purchased Disney+ at its launch. Some of the lukewarm response was due to general confusion over how HBO Max differed from the similar-sounding existing HBO apps like HBO Now and HBO Go. Meanwhile, lingering contractual disputes with two major streaming carriers, Roku and Amazon, prevented HBO Max from being available through either company for the time being. In short, it was a generally embarrassing start for a major platform crafted by one of the biggest telecommunications companies in the world and stocked with one of the most recognizable entertainment libraries in history. But for those who were checking it out, subscribers discovered one comic personality with an HBO show that they quickly turned into a huge hit...and it most certainly wasn't Bill Maher!

"The wabbit kicked the bucket! The wabbit kicked the bucket!" Bugs and Elmer sing in Robot Rabbit, one of the newly remastered HD cartoons making their debut on HBO Max before even turning up on disc.

It all started when Bloomberg reported on June 2 that HBO Max's most in-demand program since its launch was the new Looney Tunes Cartoons series, with analytics based on social media buzz, viewer response, and even piracy attempts. All of these various metrics were showing that Bugs and Daffy were even beating out HBO's own headlining signature series, Game of Thrones (which, in all fairness, had already concluded before the service launched). As more and more news outlets picked up the story, the message started to get a bit muddled and began to suggest that it was in fact the classic Looney Tunes shorts outpacing the Lannisters--and a number of online articles were using classic screen grabs or clip art to illustrate that point.

So whether they knew what was really going on or if the mixed message was instead getting through, it was clear to those at HBO Max that subscribers were enjoying the Looney Tunes section of the service. Plans were already in motion to include feature films like Space Jam and Back in Action in addition to other material such as Cartoon Network's New Looney Tunes series (a.k.a. Wabbit)--but what of the classic theatrical shorts? HBO Max definitely wanted to make more available, remastered and in high definition, but the well was soon running dry of cartoons already done for the various Blu-ray and DVD releases--and even some that had yet to appear on disc like Rabbit Every Monday and Robot Rabbit. So to help bulk up HBO's library, the seemingly unthinkable was going to happen yet again: Warner Bros. would start remastering all of the remaining classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts, and this time without any immediate home video outlet as the reason!

BUT!

The global COVID-19 pandemic was still in full effect, and Warner's in-house Motion Picture Imaging facility was still closed due to California's lockdown order. So in what seemed like a logical solution at the time, WarnerMedia outsourced remastering duties to overseas post-production houses, sending them not negatives but high-quality existing masters. In addition to any remaining A-list character shorts, rarely seen black and white cartoons were also sent over, as were films from the late '60s Seven Arts era, the made-for-TV stuff from the '70s and '80s...even the transfers originally done for the Porky Pig 101 DVD set. Nothing was being left behind, and if newly remastered HD versions could be done cheaply and quickly, then it only meant that the library of titles readily available for potential disc release was going to increase hundredfold (which had always been the main reason why Warner Archive churned out a plethora of Hanna-Barbera releases over classic theatrical animation; because all of that had already been remastered). What could possibly go wrong...?

One of these new remasterings soon debuted on Blu-ray in mid-June via Warner Archive, which added Hare Splitter as a bonus onto the Doris Day/Jack Carson musical comedy Romance on the High Seas. Hare Splitter was in much need of an upgrade, as it was last seen on disc unremastered and sped up on the Stars of Space Jam: Bugs Bunny DVD. Unfortunately, though the cartoon was in fact newly scanned and cleaned up, it was poorly encoded onto the disc itself, resulting in an often blurry and at times even interlaced-looking, broadcast-level picture (something that hadn't slipped by in digital picture scanning since around the time of the Golden Collection Volume Two). And perhaps most puzzling of all, the newly remastered cartoon wasn't even presented on the Blu-ray in high definition, even after Warner Archive's Facebook page had advertised an HD version as a feature on the disc!

With thousands of lives being lost, many more being put at risk, and countless jobs being affected, any impact the pandemic was having on pop culture was surely small potatoes, but the California lockdown and worldwide travel restrictions had even jeopardized a usually dependable summertime oasis in the madness of reality: Comic-Con International in San Diego. Moving to an all-virtual format, the usual meet-and-greets, cosplaying, and Q&As of old were traded in for a variety of pre-recorded video panels, all streamed on the convention's YouTube channel. And with no real "tentpole" blockbusters to promote, studios and entertainment companies had to get a little more creative with the kinds of panels they were going to host. And so, whether it was luck or planned all along or just a result of sheer desperation for content, on July 23 Warner Bros. sponsored a panel celebrating Bugs Bunny's eightieth birthday...just four days before the anniversary of the official release date of A Wild Hare.

Yosemite Sam causes an avalanche-inducing commotion in Piker's Peak, one of several 1950s and 1960s cartoons set to finally make their debut on home video on the Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray.

Community star Yvette Nicole Brown moderated the 43-minute panel, which featured Jerry Beck, Leonard Maltin, George Feltenstein, Looney Tunes Cartoons executive producer Pete Browngardt, and the three surviving major Bugs voices: Jeff Bergman, Billy West, and Eric Bauza. Though much of the panel offered a decent, shorthand history of the Warner Bros. cartoon studio, central to the proceedings was the announcement of Warner's major Bugs home video release: the Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray, coming just in time for Christmas.

Sixty cartoons were planned to be offered on three discs, but unlike the earlier Golden Carrot Collection DVD this was no mere rehash. Over forty of the shorts were making their Blu-ray debut, and of those over thirty were newly remastered. Some films were even making their first ever appearance on home video including No Parking Hare, Piker's Peak, Bonanza Bunny, and Prince Violent--which hadn't been seen with its original title since the 1970s! On the surface the set sounded like a dream come true for fans, but at the time nobody was aware of how close they were to getting almost nothing at all!

Initially Warner Home Entertainment just wanted to take its decade-old The Essential Bugs Bunny DVD and reissue it in HD on Blu-ray. Perhaps feeling that a simple upgrade wasn't marketable enough on its own, the label wanted to make the release attractive to collectors by creating a tchotchke-filled boxed set similar to the first Platinum Collection. A deal was inked with toy manufacturer Funko to provide a Bugs Pop! figurine similar to what had been done with the Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond complete-series sets, but Warner wanted more ideas. For suggestions they turned to Jerry Beck.

Beck was blunt. Utilizing perhaps the last bit of creative sway he had with the corporate giant, he told Warner that the diehard fans didn't want toys or mini-lithos or shot glasses or vouchers for movie tickets. If the studio really wanted to bring in the collectors, do the most obvious thing: include more cartoons. Raid the vaults. Stack the deck.

And even more miraculously, they listened!

The twelve Essential Bugs Bunny cartoons were still going to be there, but almost every other short on this set was going to be new to Blu-ray. Classics that had long been on people's wish lists to be remastered on disc like Racketeer Rabbit, Rabbit Every Monday, Captain Hareblower, Hare Brush, Rabbit's Feat, Wild and Woolly Hare, and What's Cookin' Doc? would finally get their due. Many of the remaining Bugs cartoons that had been cropped on the first two Looney Tunes Super Stars DVDs were going to finally be in full frame (something the ad materials even pointed out). The various past issues with Hare Splitter were going to be fixed. And even the three very recent unremastered debuts off the Parodies Collection DVD--Jack-Wabbit and the Beanstalk, Rabbitson Crusoe, and Hare-abian Nights--were going to be redone for this set.

Unless a title was especially problematic for a general releases (Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips, Which Is Witch, etc.), the majority of the remaining Bugs cartoons that had not been released on disc were to be included. Unfortunately, a few still-missing-in-action entries like The Unruly Hare and Beanstalk Bunny continued to have unspecified issues with their original film elements and couldn't be remastered in time. But for everything else, Warner either already had it ready to go or was going to use the remastered HD versions prepared overseas for HBO Max--a number of which were quietly debuting on the service to an eagerly awaiting audience.

An example of how cartoon title sequences have been altered when remastered for HBO Max, in this case Tex Avery's The Crackpot Quail. The middle portion of the image is the original title card, seen on analog home video releases and television broadcasts. The visual information on the outsides of the border has been digitally added by the overseas post-production house.

But as fans dug deeper and deeper into the expanding catalog, there was a nagging sense that something was amiss. Though for the most part the cartoons looked bright, colorful, and in better shape than they had been in decades, a considerable number of them started with opening titles that didn't look quite right. Many of them seemed rather spacious, as if the camera had magically zoomed out more than it should have. It wasn't some kind of optical illusion; it was intentional!

For whatever reason, there was some concern that when shown against HBO Max's standard 16:9 aspect ratio the opening titles, title cards, and credits for the full-frame classic cartoons weren't "TV safe," meaning that pertinent and legally required information like credits or a copyright notice might potentially be cut off one edge of the screen or another. The typical and time-tested way of avoiding such a problem was to place the entire image into a square windowbox matte until the credits faded out--and certainly it was a technique Warner Bros. had used since the days of the Golden Jubilee VHS line. But Warner itself was not supervising this new remastering, and somebody at the farmed-out overseas studio fancied themselves a digital artist--so instead of simply creating a black or solid-colored windowbox, they went ahead and started editing and altering the actual opening graphics of the cartoons!

Apparently using a video-editing program by Adobe called After Effects, the "technician" artificially extended the visual information around the opening title and credit sequences. Additional bullseye rings were often added for the opening WB shield zooms, while extra graphics were created to expand the title card images. The very idea of tinkering with title sequences would be enough to make most film purists and completists cringe, but whoever was specifically tasked with making the alterations did them in such a ham-handed way that they turned out looking downright offensive. Sloppy digital effects riddled these amateurish edits, with entry-level Photoshop-style skills like clone-stamping doing the heaviest lifting, resulting in pieces of the frames being obviously copied and pasted to enlarge the area.

As if this lazy digital fakery wasn't enough, the ineptness was compounded by an inability to smoothly transition into or away from these Photoshopped titles. Recreating the various transitions of a title sequence is an absurdly simple process for anyone with any editing skills; they just didn't want to take the time or effort to actually do it. In some cases, crossfades and fade outs were replaced with mere abrupt jump cuts to title cards. Even the familiar "Bugs Bunny in" intertitle was affected, with the footage inexplicably looped and reversed so that Bugs isn't so much eating his carrot as he is teasing his mouth with it back and forth. An already artificial-looking opening was made all the more awkward to watch.

What was especially maddening was that once one got past these Frankensteined titles and credits, the actual bodies of the cartoons looked wonderful, often on par with had been done on past Warner-controlled restorations. It was akin to listening to a remastered Beatles song that for some reason kicked off with ten seconds of random and needless autotuning. They were decent and welcomed gifts but with butt-ugly wrapping paper. Titles aside, the end result in terms of both quality and quantity only meant that for as long as Warner Bros. had been bemoaning about the costly and time-consuming process of remastering its cartoon catalog, the truth was that if the studio had really wanted to it could have churned these out and put them on home video in abundance--especially through an outlet like Warner Archive, where their entire Hanna-Barbera output was the direct result of simply having all the material already remastered and ready to go (regardless of who actually did the work). But now, this unfortunately also meant that these kit-bashed versions would become the go-to HD masters for whatever other avenues the studio had planned for the shorts, home video included. Sure enough, there were already plans being put in place to bring these remastered cartoons back to broadcast television for the first time in decades!

And it was the ready-made back catalog that continued to fuel Warner's video releases, Warner Archive included. Late August saw the Archive issue Taz-Mania: The Complete Third Season, picking up the series from Warner Home Video proper like it did with Duck Dodgers. And like with Daffy's show, slapping the third season onto a disc was easy and inexpensive for Warner--the entire Taz-Mania series had already been mastered for digital download release on sites like iTunes and Amazon. Similarly, in September vanilla Warner Home Video released the Looney Tunes Holiday Triple Feature, a one-disc seasonal collection squeezing together Bugs Bunny's Howl-oween Special, Bah Humduck!: A Looney Tunes Christmas, and a "new" compilation called A Looney Tunes Thanksgiving, which itself was just Bugs Bunny's Thanksgiving Diet and Daffy Duck's Thanks-for-giving Special. The disc marked the Bugs special's DVD debut, but again it was extremely cost-effective because it too had already been remastered for digital release long ago.

Ready-made material was also being utilized at Warner Archive when issuing the kinda-obscure Wheeler and Woolsey comedy Kentucky Kernels on Blu-ray. Despite originally being an RKO release, as extras the disc included two Paramount Popeye cartoons--The Dance Contest and Sock-a-Bye, Baby--and even a Looney Tune, Buddy's Circus. Originally remastered for the Golden Collection Volume Six, the Blu-ray release meant that Buddy was making his hi-def debut before such other established and debatably better-loved Warner Bros. cartoon characters as Hippety Hopper, Frisky Puppy, Pete Puma, and even Bosko!

October brought a double dose of disappointments from Warner proper. First came the revelation that the upcoming Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection Blu-ray was to be delayed a month, pushed from November 3 to a new December 1 street date. Next came the unceremoniously final Looney Tunes DVD release of the year, the one-disc Bugs Bunny's Lunar Tunes/Marvin the Martian: Space Tunes Double Feature. Marking the first disc release of the once-shelved Lunar Tunes TV special (Warner ad materials even touted that the program hadn't even been sold digitally yet), the show wasn't even remastered for DVD and was simply the existing VHS transfer ported over.

The same was also true of the Space Tunes compilation, where it was just a straight port of the entire 1998 cassette release. Whether it was for budgetary or pandemic-related reasons, Warner didn't even bother to swap out the cartoons that had already been remastered for disc, as it had done for the Stars of Space Jam series. The benefit of DVD debuts of Hyde and Go Tweet and a full-screen Lumber Jack-Rabbit were tempered with a less crisp, very VHS-looking picture. It was almost an insult considering the HD transfers showing up over on HBO Max. (A follow-up DVD combining the old Tweety VHS collections Home Tweet Home and Tweet & Lovely was in production but for whatever reason never formally announced.)

And it was back on HBO Max where another huge batch of remastered cartoons arrived in November. A lot of classic character shorts were in the mix, but so were black and white 1930s cartoons that hadn't been officially seen since leaving Nickelodeon in the early 1990s, a variety of obscure Merrie Melodies not seen since the days of TNT and TBS, and even the majority of shorts from the Seven Arts era. With very few exceptions, fans were getting closer and closer to having all of the family-friendly Warner Bros. cartoons at their streaming disposal.

BUT!

The "Photoshopped" opening titles and credits continued relentlessly, with some errors more egregious than others. In a few cases, quick visual "fixes" during title sequences were so lazily done that they started to mar the names on the on-screen credits. In one infamous example, the classic Bugs cartoon Rabbit's Kin featured a duet of Photoshop errors so stunningly careless and sloppy that one could have thought they were watching an intentional gag: a badly recreated digital transition left the opening "Warner Bros. Pictures Inc." banner stuck on screen as the incoming Merrie Melodies logo faded in, while an awkward clone-stamp fix was used to get rid of a minor film blemish on Robert McKimson's director credit but further garbled it, now suggesting that the cartoon was helmed by one "R8BERT McKIMSON." Unfortunately, this was all done in earnest, and the people behind it likely thought they were earning their keep, but truthfully these mishaps just became glaring examples of what everyone had feared was going to happen to these new masters with nobody in charge who really cared. Both errors on Rabbit's Kin would later be corrected, but only after intense online criticism. Very few of the other maligned shorts were that lucky. In March 2021 Jerry Beck was able to confirm that the notorious Photoshopping culprit had been identified and "talked to," but for the most part the damage had already been done.

The long, depressing hellscape of a year ended in a fitting way with a pair of December 1 releases from Warner. On the traditional retail side of things, the big release was of course the Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection collector's set on Blu-ray, ending half a year of anticipation and finally filling a few major holes in fans' collections.

The remastered versions of the likes of Racketeer Rabbit, Hot Cross Bunny, Captain Hareblower, Wild and Woolly Hare, and others looked leaps and bounds better than what had been on home video in the past. New extras were light but appropriate: primarily new commentaries and a selection of Bugs-focused episodes from the Looney Tunes Cartoons series. A new retrospective was also included, the Bugs Bunny's 80th Anniversary What's Up, Doc-umentary!--a decent tribute that even offered a tantalizing shot of a still-unreleased, remastered version of the often-withheld Fresh Hare. And thankfully, only a handful of the new-to-disc cartoons had the oddball HBO Max title sequences.

But where collectors were having an issue with was the cost and the reason why. Priced at $74.99, the three-disc set still came bundled with the announced Funko Bugs Pop! figure, which became a sticking point for a lot of fans only because it wasn't optional. Unlike with previous Funko-packed Warner boxed sets like for Batman Beyond, there was no word of a non-limited, Funko-free edition being offered at any point--nor was there any indication of a DVD edition being in the works. It was clear that if one wanted all these cartoons on disc, then they had to plunk down money for the figurine, too. A few fans were able to sell the Funko secondhand on eBay to at least get some of their money back, but for others it was a dealbreaker. Many considered it close to extortion to force a fad collectible onto consumers just to get cartoons they wanted to own--and at a higher price than it would have been without the toy.

Cost and toy aside, Warner's technical specs also weren't doing Blu-ray enthusiasts any favors. Cartoons and audio were needlessly compressed, leaving about half of the available disc space completely free of data. Seeing Warner Archive offer lossless audio and higher bitrates for such Hanna-Barbera dreck as Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space made some folks feel that maybe the studio wasn't giving its signature cartoon star the same level of attention or respect.

It was only ironic then that more disappointments came that day from the other big classic animation release, Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 2 from Warner Archive. Containing twenty-one MGM Avery shorts, the compilation had been put into production right before March's California lockdown. So with the staff at Motion Picture Imaging furloughed, the Archive was also forced to utilize the outsourced HD transfers prepared overseas for HBO Max. Shorts that were planned for this second volume had to be dropped, and many of the available titles weren't exactly cream of the crop Avery. It was still a solid selection of cartoons--including such undeniable classics as Magical Maestro, The Cat That Hated People, Dixieland Droopy, and Little Rural Riding Hood--but it was definitely not the collection Warner Archive had originally envisioned. And unlike with the first volume and the earlier Popeye discs, the label's ad materials made it clear that these cartoons were not remastered from 4K scans.

And like with the Looney Tunes cartoons especially remastered for HBO Max, not even the King of Cartoons could escape digital screw-ups. A number of shorts had the dreaded "Photoshopped" reformatted opening titles, a weird audio mix muted out the opening sound effect gag on T.V. of Tomorrow, and the old lazy restoration standby of digital video noise reduction (DVNR) reared its ugly head again, smearing animation ink lines and giving a lot of the material a definite "choppy" look.

Diehard fans started experiencing PTSD flashbacks to the Porky Pig 101 debacle, wondering why Warner Archive would let such a comparatively inferior product out under their name after waiting so long to do the Avery catalog in the first place--and using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse was hardly a satisfactory answer. If anything, at least this time the folks at Warner Archive agreed that this was not their best work and pledged to hold off on a third volume until MPI and the other divisions at Warner could be brought back in to do their usual top-notch work. But little did anyone publicly know at the time that Warner Archive was making promises about a future it couldn't keep....

The main Warner Bros. studio was also looking to the future as it tried to troubleshoot its release slate amid a continuing global pandemic. Inspired by their workaround of releasing the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984 simultaneously to theaters and HBO Max on Christmas Day, in early December the studio announced plans to release all of their 2021 features in the same fashion. With the initiative eventually dubbed "Project Popcorn," among the would-be blockbusters announced were Godzilla vs. Kong, sequels to The Matrix and Suicide Squad, a live action/animation hybrid Tom and Jerry, and the long-gestating Space Jam: A New Legacy. A July 16, 2021, release date had been announced as far back as early 2019, and filming and animation work had slowly been progressing ever since then. Now Warner Bros. was ready to pump the continuing basketball antics of Bugs, Daffy, and the rest right into everyone's homes.

Bugs makes a surprise cameo appearance in the 1944 Paramount Puppetoon Jasper Goes Hunting, which made its home video debut on The Puppetoon Movie Volume 2. The restoration for this revolutionary short was funded in part by ASIFA-Hollywood, thanks to the efforts of Jerry Beck.

And it just wouldn't be a proper birthday celebration without at least one final surprise present, and like with most of the past decade's better surprises on home video, it came not from Warner but rather an independent label. Specifically, it was Arnold Leibovit's crowdfunded The Puppetoon Movie Volume 2, released as a Blu-ray/DVD combo set in mid-December. A sequel to his own 1987 The Puppetoon Movie, this new release eschewed the clip-show style of its predecessor and was instead presented as just a straight-up compilation of eighteen remastered classic George Pal Puppetoon shorts, all licensed from Paramount and all seeing their first official release since leaving television syndication in the 1960s.

One highlight on the disc was 1944's Jasper Goes Hunting, in which (now politically incorrect) heroes Jasper and Professor Scarecrow cross paths with a cel-animated Bugs Bunny! Authorized by Leon Schlesinger, animated by Robert McKimson, and voiced by Mel Blanc, this revolutionary cameo was finally making its first (and very likely only) appearance on home video. The restoration for Jasper was partially funded by ASIFA-Hollywood as part of the organization's long-term program to preserve historically important theatrical animated films that would otherwise be neglected by their respective corporate owners.

And as if to give the wascally wabbit one final birthday send-off, Warner Archive also squeaked in with some Bugs-related content on its year-end Blu-ray for the Kirk Douglas drama Young Man with a Horn. Seemingly for no other reason than they were of the same release year as the feature, the disc's extras included HD versions of three 1950 Bugs shorts: Homeless Hare, Hillbilly Hare, and Hurdy-Gurdy Hare, the last of which being completely new to the format.

Going into 2021 Bugs would again feature prominently in one of Warner Archive's earliest releases, but not via a traditional short subject. February's Blu-ray of the Doris Day musical My Dream Is Yours included the hi-def debut of what is inarguably the movie's most memorable moment, a dream-sequence number with an animated Bugs singing and dancing alongside a live action Day and co-star Jack Carson. Like with the film's original 2007 DVD release, the Archive Blu-ray also included a classic cartoon among its special features--in fact, the exact same cartoon, a double-dip of the HD version of A Ham in a Role from the Platinum Collection Volume Three.

Another carried-over special feature was found on the other Doris Day Blu-ray released that month, with A Hound for Trouble appearing with 1951's On Moonlight Bay. Unfortunately, another of the recent HBO Max remasters was used for this disc, one with even more half-assed attempts to extend and clean up the title cards--and like with the problems found back on Rabbit's Kin, this "restoration" also created new blemishes on Chuck Jones's director credit.

As if the continued appearance of these mangled masters wasn't discouraging enough, there was even sadder news behind the scenes, as delivering Bugs's classic feature-film appearance would be one of the George Feltenstein's final official acts as head of Warner Archive. Feltenstein's position as WarnerMedia's senior vice president of theatrical catalog marketing had been dissolved back in November 2020 during a round of massive layoffs at the studio--layoffs that at least the Hollywood Reporter suggested was a result of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic but in reality had been orchestrated by AT&T as a way of streamlining the workforce and helping alleviate some of the $151 billion debt it had accumulated from the Warner acquisition. And with Warner Home Entertainment preparing to consolidate its operations with Universal Studios, it made anyone's role in the home media divisions particularly at risk. (Even Ron Sanders, a three-decade veteran and global president of the video operations was sent packing!)

Feltenstein remained employed at Warner until February 19, after which time any public discussion of his role at the studio was kept vague at best. Unsure of his return, he had the good sense to leave a series of instructions to the remaining staff regarding a number of projects that were currently in development, including two titles related to classic Warner-owned theatrical animation.

In case it wasn't clear enough how much of a state of flux Warner Archive was in, in March the studio's official online store, WBShop.com, announced not only a final sale on Warner Archive titles but also that it was ending its association with the Araca Group, the merchandise vendor that had operated the site since April 2015. By April 1, the site was no longer taking orders, and visitors were encouraged to purchase Warner Archive titles at Amazon, Movie Zyng, and other online retailers. The Archive's social media accounts even referred to the label's Amazon page as its "official" online store. WBShop, meanwhile, soon reopened on April 29 under the management of new vendor Snow Commerce, but no home video product would be offered.

While questions continued to abound over Warner Archive, it was also the end of an era for its parent company, as on April 23 the company Studio Distribution Services (SDS) officially launched. The result of the previously announced joint distribution deal between Warner Home Entertainment and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, the new outfit was tasked with handling all physical media distribution between the two studios in North America, with day-to-day operations primarily being managed by Universal. Warner Home Entertainment still existed as an entity--in charge of remastering and programming its titles--but all references to such a company on product was now wiped clean.

Overseas there was something more of an even split, with Warner handling distribution for both studios in such areas as Italy and the United Kingdom and Universal doing likewise in places like Germany and Japan. But the American label that had enjoyed autonomy and total control of its own releases since 1980 was now a shell of its former self, and with a rival studio in command yet. Sadly, it was only the beginning, folks!

In mid-May, AT&T announced its intentions to sell WarnerMedia to Discovery, Inc., owner of such basic-cable channels as HGTV, Food Network, Animal Planet, TLC, and the flagship Discovery Channel, among others. Though touted in the press as a "merger" with equal ownership, the reality was that AT&T was drowning in debt from its only three-year-old WarnerMedia purchase, and the telecommunications behemoth was looking for a way out. Discovery was set to pay $43 billion for the Warner assets, half of AT&T's original $85 billion purchase price. It would take another year for the transaction to be approved by various trade commissions around the world, but for already the third time in the new millennium, Bugs was going to have yet another new owner...but first, he had to save the "Serververse"!

Bugs invokes his meme-famous "Big Chungus" look from Wabbit Twouble upon meeting LeBron James in Space Jam: A New Legacy. Despite a healthy opening weekend and impressive streaming numbers, the movie would ultimately be deemed a failure.

After seemingly an eternity in development, the sequel nobody asked for, Space Jam: A New Legacy, was finally released on July 16 both theatrically and for streaming on HBO Max (but only to premium subscribers). Reviews were not kind, even when compared to the original movie, with critics being annoyed at the excessive crossovers (Lola Bunny hanging out with Wonder Woman, Granny in The Matrix, Rick and Morty experimenting on Taz, etc.), disappointed in the cookie-cutter writing (credited to six screenwriters), unimpressed with LeBron James's acting abilities, bored with the tedious runtime, and baffled by the appropriateness of prominently including the raping droogs from A Clockwork Orange among the Warner-filled crowd in the climactic basketball game. Nobody was sure who this movie was intended for.

To try to amp up anticipation, SDS released the original Space Jam as a Blu-ray/UHD combo pack. It marked the first Looney Tunes-centric release in 4K ultra high definition. Perhaps not surprisingly, no theatrical cartoons were part of the discs' special features.

Despite the critical pummeling, the sequel nevertheless had an impressive opening weekend. Theatrically it grossed $31 million, well over Space Jam's own $27.5 million debut (but granted in a thousand more theaters). Equally impressive was the number of HBO Max subscribers tuning in over the weekend, as Samba TV reported that over two million households had streamed the movie, with the majority of viewers coming from James's sorta-hometown of Cleveland.

But word of mouth caught up quickly, and not even the Tune Squad could recover from an embarrassing 69 percent drop in domestic gross the following weekend, while also losing three thousand theaters in just a month's time. It ended up grossing less than such other summer releases as Black Widow, F9: The Fast Saga, Jungle Cruise, and Free Guy. Even with a lingering global pandemic affecting movie distribution, Space Jam: A New Legacy was ultimately declared a box-office bomb.

And of course with any would-be family blockbuster, there were the licensing deals to mitigate the actual movie's losses. The usual suspects were present; breakfast cereals, plush dolls, Funko Pops, McDonald's Happy Meals, t-shirts, etc. But then there were also the oddball higher-end marketing campaigns--was any ten-year-old in 2021 really going to be interested in a jeans "collab" with Tommy Hilfiger? Warner Bros. was trying so hard to thread the needle between engaging with the older fans who for whatever reason still had fond memories of the first film a quarter-century later and convincing a new generation that a sci-fi basketball movie starring Bugs Bunny was hip and relevant.

Perhaps most concerning was that unlike with their previous two big-budget theatrical endeavors, there was no new Looney Tunes home video product prepared as a tie-in. Considering Warner Home Entertainment had only recently brought the Stars of Space Jam concept back from the dead for a DVD release, the lack of anything similar being connected with A New Legacy seemed like a missed opportunity. And with the new movie's release date having been locked in and announced ever since February 2019, it wasn't like the label didn't have time to throw something together.

But while WarnerMedia was picking up the pieces of its latest big-budget disaster, fans of the studio's history and legacy were in for some much rejoicing in late August, as the one and only George Feltenstein was welcomed back to the company after having been forced away for nearly half a year. Officially dubbed "WarnerMedia Library Historian," Feltenstein's newly expanded role at the studio was still being mapped out upon his return, but one duty he immediately went back to was heading up and managing the Warner Archive label, completing a number of projects that had been left in limbo during his absence.

One such release was October's long-awaited Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 3, the final installment in the near-complete chronicle of the director's MGM output. Twenty cartoons were found on this collection, all from new 4K scans of the best available elements in Warner's various vaults (as opposed to relying on the questionable HBO Max masters used on volume two). Some of the highly anticipated highlights included Avery's Oscar-nominated debut with Blitz Wolf, the Screwball Squirrel epic Happy-Go-Nutty, the beloved King-Size Canary, and the director's official finale in the television-themed Cellbound. In the end, sixty Tex Avery cartoons were made available across the three volumes, with the remaining seven unreleased shorts primarily being those that would be a little too politically incorrect to include on a mainstream release, even by Warner Archive's more collector-friendly standards.

This third disc wasn't exactly the way George Feltenstein and Jerry Beck wanted it to come out, with a couple of special features being left by the wayside (mainly dealing with differences and edits between original versions of the shorts and reissues). In fact, Volume 3 ended up with only one bonus, but it was a good one! For the first time in the Screwball Classics series, one of Avery's Warner Bros. cartoons was included, 1941's The Crackpot Quail. A somewhat misguided attempt by the director to replicate the success he had with his own A Wild Hare the year before, here it's a wisecracking quail being hunted, right down to calling his canine predator "Doc." The quail did, however, have a unique quirk of blowing air out of his beak, either to blow a feather out of his face or to taunt the dog--and initially, the sound effect that accompanied it was a standard "raspberry" noise. But just before its theatrical release, it was determined that the noise was considered obscene (as it was associated with the somewhat-rude, and now totally outdated, gesture of giving someone "the boid"), so the sound effect was changed in every instance to a repetitive and thoroughly annoying whistle. Warner Bros. saved a nitrate print of the original version with the raspberry sound effect, and it was made available publicly for the first time ever on this Blu-ray! For Feltenstein and Beck it was a major cartoon-collecting victory, as they had been trying to include the original version on a home video release as far back as the final Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc set.

Shortly before Feltenstein's departure at the beginning of the year, instructions were left behind to the Archive staff, detailing specifically which film reel to pull from the vault. Unfortunately, the other shoe dropped: the original, never-before-released soundtrack was simply grafted onto the HBO Max remastered version, complete with an ever-present "Photoshopped" title sequence. Though it was a case of two steps forward, one step back, the sheer rarity of the piece made for a tantalizing what-if of what else Warner Archive could do with the Looney Tunes if given the chance to do a proper, dedicated release. If only.

(Another potential animation release from Warner Archive that Feltenstein had left extensive notes for wasn't so lucky, a complete collection of the 1940s Max Fleischer Superman cartoons. That compilation would eventually transfer from the Archive to SDS for a mass-retail release in May 2023, with much criticism directed at its rather lazy remastering and sound restoration.)

While Warner Archive was treating animation fans to inarguably some of the best the medium had ever produced, SDS was busy cramming the artform's latest abomination down the general audience's throats, as on the very same day as Tex Avery's greatest was Space Jam: A New Legacy released on home media. Perhaps wanting to cash in before word of mouth turned people away as it did during its theatrical run, the label saturated the movie onto every available format: DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD. SDS even took the peculiar step of bundling the film with the original Space Jam as a Blu-ray double feature, a move usually done only after the initial new-release hype has passed and a movie becomes just another catalog title.

The strategy paid off in the short term, as Space Jam: A New Legacy enjoyed a fairly strong debut sales week (charting only behind F9), with over half of the sales coming from DVD units. But like with the theatrical release it was an all-too-brief celebration, as by the end of the year--even with the immediate bump of the holiday season--the sequel would nevertheless move fewer copies than the likes of Raya and the Last Dragon, Godzilla vs. Kong, and even The Croods: A New Age.

Meanwhile with Warner Archive returning to form and back in George Feltenstein's hands, it was once again catering to fans of classic animation and classic movies in the same way Warner Home Video itself did in the early days of DVD. By the end of 2021 and going into 2022 the label continued to utilize at-the-ready HD masters of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for special feature fodder.

Sometimes the results left a little something to be desired if the source of the cartoons was HBO Max, such as the November release of the pre-Code rarity Ladies They Talk About using I Like Mountain Music or March's Blu-ray of the original A Star Is Born including A Star Is Hatched, both with the now-increasingly annoying Photoshopped title sequences. On the contrary, an HBO Max version didn't necessarily mean any alteration at all, like with the lovely new remaster of Pettin' in the Park on February's release of the Busby Berkeley classic Gold Diggers of 1933. But more often than not, Warner Archive would simply take shorts that were already remastered with HD in mind back during the Golden Collection series, leading to the hi-def debuts of To Duck....or Not to Duck on January's release of Edge of Darkness with Errol Flynn, or We're in the Money and I've Got to Sing a Torch Song on the aforementioned Gold Diggers of 1933.

And while Warner Archive was unearthing some of the earliest Looney Tunes animation, work was already underway elsewhere on the brand's future, as filming was in full swing on Coyote vs. Acme, a live action/animation feature film in which Wile E. takes legal action against his longtime trap supplier, with wrestling superstar John Cena starring as Acme's sinister defense lawyer. In the wake of the failure of Looney Tunes: Back in Action back in 2003, Coyote vs. Acme had been just one of a number of proposed hybrid movies put into pre-production to hopefully rejuvenate the Looney Tunes as a theatrical franchise. Considering what else had been pitched over the last two decades--a Marvin the Martian Christmas movie in which Santa imprisoned the alien inside a present, a Pepé le Pew crime caper starring Mike Myers, a CGI Bugs Bunny movie from the writer of Elf, and a Speedy Gonzales adventure with Eugenio Derbez voicing the mouse--the fact that this was the idea that was allowed to move forward was surprising, but the "success" of Space Jam: A New Legacy must have suggested to someone at the studio that pairing the characters with a major sports personality was still a winning formula.

Warner Bros. had already set a July 21, 2023, release date for the film, but by the end of April the studio quickly and quietly swapped it out with another in-production family film, a live action Barbie movie. But with the movie knee-deep in production and with costly animation and post-production committed to it, Coyote vs. Acme would surely see a definite release, right? Who could possibly stop it from happening??

On April 8, barely a year after it had been first announced to the press, AT&T completed its hasty and desperate sale of WarnerMedia to Discovery, Inc., with the new "merged" corporation baring the name Warner Bros. Discovery. A complete reorganization of Warner's various divisions quickly followed, with most of them placed under the leadership of Discovery's existing executives. But on the very top of the pyramid and positioning himself as the "face" of the new studio was incoming Warner Bros. Discovery president and chief executive officer David Zaslav.

Something of a master at channel drift, Zaslav had made Discovery into a cable-TV powerhouse by moving its various networks further and further away from their original intents and leeching onto the growing popularity (and lower costs) of reality television. The educational and scientific nature of the Learning Channel and flagship Discovery Channel was traded in for general entertainment targeting the lowest common denominator, most often with an exploitative angle. It was under and because of Zaslav that basic cable became notorious for such video sewage as 19 Kids and Counting, Toddlers & Tiaras, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Sarah Palin's Alaska, My 600 lb Life, Dr. Pimple Popper, and countless others. And now the likes of HBO, CNN, Turner Classic Movies, and all of Warner's intellectual properties were in his hands, too.

Zaslav now saw himself as a modern-day mogul, in full control of a legendary Hollywood studio. He moved Discovery's base of operations to the Warner lot, literally taking over Jack Warner's old office and even bringing the co-founder's desk out of storage. (Whether he recognized the irony of emulating the ruthless and historically despised Jack Warner is unknown.) Some hard and fast decisions were made to try to bring the enormous company to a singular purpose. Project Popcorn was going to end, allowing the feature films a greater chance at box office revenue. Apart from HBO, CNN, and the primary Warner Bros. movie and TV productions, all of the studio's other brands and outlets were to be put under existing Discovery management. Numerous production deals for scripted content for the former Turner-owned cable networks were terminated. And perhaps Zaslav's biggest and boldest plan of all was to merge HBO Max with his own Discovery+. Pieces immediately begun being put into place, as the brand new CNN+ streaming service was to be shut down only a month after its launch, leading to industry ridicule and considerable damage to the CNN brand. Numerous longtime Warner executives were shown the door in favor of Discovery personnel. If there was a department or network where some streamlining or budget-cutting could be made, David Zaslav was going to find it.

The one area that continued relatively unscathed by the Warner Bros. Discovery merger was home video. No doubt the creation of Studio Distribution Services and the new reliance on Universal for much of the day-to-day operations meant there was little overhead or staff to remove from the newly rechristened Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment. With Warner veteran Jim Wuthrich still serving as the label's chief executive, anything related to home media was now put under the purview of Warner Bros. Discovery Content Sales, the division of the corporation handling licensing of titles for streaming, digital downloads, and yes, physical media.

As to the fate of Warner Archive, Zaslav had yet to go on record what his thoughts were about his new studio's boutique label, even as concerns were being raised about Warner's other refuge for cinephiles, Turner Classic Movies. In quick succession, the channel was ordered to reduce its salaried staff, slash its already tiny production budget, and defer programming and on-air promotion decisions to Discovery's management, all with the hope that the changes would essentially put TCM on autopilot. (One staff member anonymously told the Hollywood Reporter they were terrified at what would be cooked up by the same promotional department that had to sell viewers on MILF Manor.) Several key people at the top of the network left, either by force or in disgust, including its longtime programmer Charles Tabesh. It would eventually take a literal intervention from directors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson to convince Zaslav to keep an actual production staff at TCM. Not wanting to enrage directors he considered some of his idols, an about-face soon followed. Tabesh returned, and the network was given a bit more autonomy by being transferred away from the rest of the live-action-oriented cable channels and put back under the eye of Cartoon Network president Michael Ouweleen, who had been overseeing the channel before the merger.

Despite the drama at Turner Classic Movies, George Feltenstein spoke glowingly in interviews about the new head of Warner Bros., seeing him in a sort of "One of us! One of us!" light. "We have someone here leading our company who recognizes the importance of our past," he told British magazine Country & Town House, feeling secure about the future of Warner Archive.

In an introductory town hall meeting/interview hosted by Oprah Winfrey, Zaslav told his new combined staff that he was hoping Warner Bros. Discovery would foster a culture of "people feeling valued for who they are." As the public would soon find out, that value wouldn't apply to the people on the creative side of the company.

Meanwhile, the Looney Tunes brand was held securely in place under the umbrella of Warner Bros. Animation, and the division had some grand plans in place for the franchise. Seeing Bugs Bunny's eightieth birthday celebrated without any kind of infringing incident, Warner Bros. now felt comfortable enough to acknowledge the anniversary of one of their other big Looney Tunes stars, Tweety. An "80 Years of Tweety" logo was designed, a commemorative web site was launched, new licensed product deals were signed, and a campaign was devised with a team of international artists to provide a series of murals to be unveiled in eighty major cities around the world. It seemed as if all that was missing was something for the actual Tweety cartoon collector.

But unlike with Bugs's big birthday two years before, fans hoping for any kind of similar comprehensive Blu-ray collection covering the little canary would be disappointed. Instead SDS unleashed a brand new direct-to-DVD movie in mid-June, King Tweety. Helmed by Careen Ingle, one of the directors behind HBO Max's Hanna-Barbera-themed series Jellystone!, the hour-and-change production made the somewhat bold decision to give the main characters a stylized makeover, making them look like refugees from recent Cartoon Network shows like The Amazing World of Gumball or Steven Universe. But beyond the window dressing it was a pretty by-the-numbers comedic globetrotting caper/adventure story, coming off like a lost episode of The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries. As if to underscore the connection, the DVD's only special features were three (already released) Mysteries episodes.

Bugs takes a bow in a teaser image for Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical, a feature-length movie that had been announced to debut on HBO Max before being quickly cancelled early in pre-production.

The Looney Tunes news continued into the summer, all with an HBO Max connection. Just a day after King Tweety's release did Warner Bros. announce the production of Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical, a brand new feature-length animated movie set for release on both the streaming service and Cartoon Network. Harkening back to the classic music and show-biz cartoons of the Golden Age, the film was to follow Bugs as a Broadway superstar getting ready to retire from a hit musical and turn his starring role over to Daffy--before the duck gets kidnapped by an obsessed fan! The movie was being penned by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert head writer Ariel Dumas and directed by Vivo co-director Brandon Jeffords, with Tony- and Grammy-winning songwriter Tom Kitt providing the music.

As for HBO Max's existing programs, in late June SDS quietly placed the first ever DVD release from the Looney Tunes Cartoons series onto its schedule. The first volume was originally set to hit retail shelves in July 2023, but the label would eventually cancel those plans and just as unceremoniously remove the title from its lineup altogether. (As of this update, no dedicated Looney Tunes Cartoons home media has seen release.)

All this and a new series debuted, too! Added to the portfolio of original HBO Max productions on July 25 was Bugs Bunny Builders, a preschool program where Bugs and the gang are toddlers running their own construction business. With the likes of Eric Bauza, Bob Bergen, Jeff Bergman, and Candi Milo returning to voice the younger versions of their established characters, the series was leaps and bounds more tolerable than, say, Loonatics Unleashed. But all would not bode well for the franchise's future on the platform.

If anyone had been optimistic about the Warner Bros. Discovery merger (and that alone was a pretty big "if"), then they quickly sobered up in August 2022. After spending $90 million on its development and production, the studio announced that it was shelving its upcoming Batgirl movie scheduled for release on HBO Max, with it having already completed filming and being midway through post-production. The decision reportedly came from David Zaslav himself, who wanted all of the DC Comics films to be massive, big-budget theatrical tentpole spectacles--something the project was never really intended to be in the first place. Not even the celebrated return of Michael Keaton in the role of Batman was enough to save it from cancellation.

Batgirl wasn't alone on the chopping block, as it was doomed alongside the animated Scoob! Holiday Haunt. A prequel to the theatrical Scoob! reboot from the year before, it too was nearing completion at the time of the announcement. Frustratingly, animators were nevertheless forced to finish work on the movie now knowing full well that it wasn't going to see any kind of release.

The cuts weren't just limited to near-completed productions, as a whole slate of additional new projects intended for HBO Max were given the ax. Among those announced as not moving forward were a brand new reimagined Batman show from Batman: The Animated Series producer Bruce Timm, an Amazing World of Gumball movie, an animated Steve Urkel Christmas special, and two Looney Tunes productions: the just-announced Bye Bye Bunny and the previously unrevealed The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. Created by the team behind the Looney Tunes Cartoons series, The Day... was to pair Daffy and Porky as the two attempt to save Earth from a plot by aliens to rule the planet via mind-controlling bubble gum. The one saving grace was that unlike with Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt, the various production teams would be free to shop their projects around to other distributors--Warner Bros. Discovery was simply not interested in spending any more money on developing them.

And unfortunately, it did all come down to money, as Variety and other outlets would later report that Warner Bros. Discovery was taking advantage of an accounting loophole by shelving Batgirl and Scooby. By not releasing the movies at all, the corporation could claim a tax write-off and chip away at some of the debt that was incurred by the merger--but only if the productions were formally cancelled by mid-August. Again, this was the same merger where its new leader said he wanted "people feeling valued for who they are."

While everyone was wringing their hands and fretting over what other dirty tricks Warner Bros. Discovery was cooking up, a faint glimmer of optimism came from, not surprisingly, Warner Archive. In late September, George Feltenstein contacted the Home Theater Forum web site about the label's plans for 2023. Though brief and without naming any titles, one bit of information caught people's attention: "There will be more BD classic animation..." Little did anyone know that those plans were to involve the studio's biggest animated property.

In the meantime, though, with no dedicated classic animation releases on deck from any aspect of Warner Home Entertainment, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were still being used as special-feature fodder on Warner Archive's growing collection of Blu-rays, but still with inconsistent results. The fan-favorite Bugs short Hyde and Hare appeared (appropriately) on the Archive's October Blu-ray of the original 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Fredric March. But even though the cartoon had been remastered in high definition and was currently being seen that way on HBO Max, the disc instead simply upscaled the unremastered, standard definition, off-the-shelf copy that was found on the original Dr. Jekyll DVD back in 2004.

The year ended with Warner Bros. Discovery making big plans for the future about its past, as in mid-December the company announced that it would celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Warner Bros. Marketed under the banner "Celebrating Every Story," the campaign was scheduled to start on April 4 and cover every aspect of the Warner Bros. legacy, from film to television to animation.

A series of documentaries was being prepared for HBO Max. Turner Classic Movies would devote the entire month of April to highlighting the studio's landmark films. Comprehensive boxed sets were being compiled for home video. And the Looney Tunes characters were going to be featured front and center in licensing deals, which for the most part revolved around them dressing up as other Warner Bros. characters--Bugs as Harry Potter, Daffy as Pennywise from It, Taz as Scooby-Doo, and every single last character dressed as Batman at some point.

The studio was playing a little bit of catch up, as Disney had announced its own centennial plans as early as November 2021, set to begin at midnight on New Year's Eve and continue all the way through the summer of 2024. Disney had a better tagline with "100 Years of Wonder," better commemorative productions in the works, and of course the might of the Disney theme parks all at its disposal. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. had...well, cartoon characters in Batsuits.

"The name Warner Bros. is synonymous with entertainment," David Zaslav said in the primary press release, "and we are honored to be celebrating this iconic studio's centennial and the rich heritage that stretches back to the four brothers who founded it in 1923."

Zaslav's beaming would fall on deaf ears by the end of the month, when HBO Max would begin the wholesale removal of hours upon hours of classic material, much of it animation-related. In addition to half of the entire classic Flintstones series, over 250 Looney Tunes shorts disappeared, primarily anything released after 1950 including the likes of Duck Amuck, One Froggy Evening, and What's Opera, Doc? In most cases, the licensing deals for the material simply expired, and Warner Bros. Discovery didn't want HBO Max to spend more money renewing them while it was still trying to figure out how to reinvent the service in Zaslav's image.

In the meantime, Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to offer many of the removed live action titles and even The Flintstones to other services such as Tubi and Pluto TV, but Looney Tunes wouldn't get such a reprieve. If you wanted to stream those post-1950 shorts, you either had to stick with the standard definition masters over the still-existing Boomerang service or wait until HBO Max renewed its contract. And wait. And wait.

While HBO Max was getting ready for its big makeover, another change was happening behind the scenes. On January 2, 2023, David Decker officially became the new President of Content Sales for Warner Bros. Discovery., replacing studio veteran Jim Wuthrich, who had been with the company since 1998 and was instrumental in formulating the way Warner Bros. marketed the then-new technology of DVD and then later on the advent of digital distribution. Decker, meanwhile, had been with the company for nearly two decades and was last responsible for selling Warner content to third-party outlets and networks. Now he had full control over the studio's distribution system, putting the remnants of Warner Home Entertainmnet directly under his supervision.

Regardless of who was in charge, Warner Home Entertainment--or rather, Studio Distribution Services--was forging ahead with disc releases centering around the big Warner Bros. centennial and as promised, almost all of the studio's major brands would be represented. For Looney Tunes the big "new" release was Duck Dodgers: The Complete Series, a three-disc Blu-ray set released at the end of March.

Unlike the show's third-season DVD release that was only available online through the Warner Archive, this HD upgrade was being sold at general retail. Granted very little effort was done on the production side of things, since the entire series had already been remastered in high definition and was being sold digitally that way for a while now, but the determination to have something technically new from the Looney Tunes franchise out on physical media was admirable. The set's only special feature was a double-dip of the original Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century short from 1953, but something bigger and better was in store for collectors of the classic cartoons.

On the same day as the Duck Dodgers HD release did Warner Archive announce the biggest classic-cartoon news of the year, an all-new series of Looney Tunes Blu-rays! With the Archive finally receiving full access to the entire Warner Bros. cartoon library, Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 1 would be a single-disc compilation collecting twenty cartoons all appearing remastered on disc for the first time ever.

To get Warner Home Entertainment proper to relent on its stranglehold of the Looney Tunes catalog had been a pet project for George Feltenstein, who simply felt that all of the repackages and rehashes at retail weren't serving the fans who were still interested in purchasing physical media. He knew that if the Warner Archive had its chance, it could easily present a series of releases that would simultaneously cater to the collector but also turn a nice profit for the studio. As Feltenstein himself put it, "I saw this as really money being left on the table."

Penciled in for a "late May" release, the cover art promised appearances by such Looney Tunes stars and fan-favorites as Foghorn Leghorn, Road Runner, the Goofy Gophers, and even the Three Bears! And already the tease of five cartoons to appear on the disc was enough to make some completists salivate, including Daffy Doodles, Arthur Davis's Catch as Cats Can with an oddball Sylvester, and perhaps the sweetest plum announced thus far, the long-awaited remastered debut of the Chuck Jones classic Beanstalk Bunny.

Charlie Dog returns from certain down-under doom in Little Orphan Airedale, one of the many classics that were making their disc debuts on the Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 1 Blu-ray.

Jerry Beck was practically beaming about the announcement, writing with childlike glee on his Animation Scoop web site that the collection will contain "a group of first-time-on-blu-ray, restored HD Warner cartoon classics – not the same restorations from HBO-Max and MeTV: an upgrade." And of course, the "Vol. 1" already in the title meant that Jerry and George had high hopes that sales would warrant a sequel.

When the full contents were finally revealed a couple of weeks later, it was nothing short of a dream come true for Looney Tunes fans. These weren't just merely "first-time-on-blu-ray" shorts; all twenty cartoons were making their debuts remastered on disc, having been skipped over the course of the Golden Collection, <>Super Stars, and Platinum Collection series. And this wasn't obscure, bottom-of-the-barrel, Buddy-and-Cool-Cat leftover material, either. In addition to the already-teased titles, fans would be getting the likes of Cracked Quack, A Fractured Leghorn, Greedy for Tweety, His Bitter Half, Little Orphan Airedale, A Mouse Divided, and Stooge for a Mouse--all A-list material, many of which populated the old Golden Jubilee cassettes and were high up on collectors' missing-in-action lists.

And with Beck and Feltenstein picking the contents (although Feltenstein usually gave all credit to Beck), there were of course some tidbits for the diehard fans. A number of shorts were by Arthur Davis, who had been long-neglected in the digital age. Chuck Jones's Three Bears were being represented with What's Brewin', Bruin? and The Bee-Deviled Bruin, the final two cartoons from the series left to be released remastered. And in addition to Beanstalk Bunny, Bugs would make an appearance with another essential entry in The Unruly Hare, meaning this new disc was filling up the few holes left over by the Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection.

"The titles were carefully selected," Jerry wrote on his Cartoon Research site, "with the thought of future volumes in mind." He also bounced a number of ideas off his fellow Cartoon Research writers, even making a point to single out historian Devon Baxter in interviews. It was simply going to be the kind of all-star, classic-era collection fans had been dreaming of, and--more importantly--offered an assortment of cartoons and characters that were going to be accessible to the mainstream, more-casual fan to get them to want to buy it.

With anticipation building for not only Collector's Choice but also for what else Warner Archive may have up its sleeves for a follow-up, it was business as usual for Studio Distribution Services. Despite all the grand plans the studio made for its big anniversary, its primary video label was just using the opportunity to repackage previously released material. Sure there were plans for a few key 4K releases on UHD--The Maltese Falcon, the Christopher Reeve Superman films--but for anything animated, it was whatever was already on the shelf. This was no more apparent than with the mid-April release of the Looney Tunes Complete Platinum Collection on DVD.

Combining the three Platinum Collection releases would have been a noble idea if it was on the Blu-ray format, as the first two HD volumes had been out of print since the beginning of the decade and were fetching extremely high prices on the secondary market. (In fact, very little Looney Tunes material was still in print on the format at this point, with the third Platinum Collection and the Bugs set being the only major releases still readily available.) But the DVD editions were all quite easy to obtain, and with all six Golden Collection volumes also still in print they seemed even more redundant (plus, the DVD editions of Platinum one and two were also missing the Blu-ray versions' bonus discs of special features). Still, SDS was determined to pitch the six-disc set to "the most discerning cartoon connoisseurs," even though they most likely already owned the original volumes (and on a better format, too). As if to punctuate who the release was really intended for, Walmart was given a special edition of the set that merely included an extra slipcover.

A couple of better surprises came at the end of April from, of course, Warner Archive, which continued to utilize a variety of classic shorts as special features on its Blu-ray releases--and with the impending release of Collector's Choice Vol. 1, all eyes were on the label to see how else it would cater to cartoon collectors. Two of the earliest Warner Bros. cartoons would find their way onto Archive Blu-rays, with the Merrie Melody A Great Big Bunch of You appearing on the William Powell-starring romantic drama One Way Passage. Meanwhile, the controversial pre-Code thriller Safe in Hell would offer as an extra the 1931 Bosko cartoon Dumb Patrol, marking the first newly remastered Bosko cartoon to be put onto disc since the final Golden Collection volume back in 2008.

(Why Bosko was so lucky to have a brand new HD short ready to go might have been accidental. It has been suggested that Warner Bros. had intended to remaster the 1964 Bugs Bunny cartoon Dumb Patrol for HBO Max, but the Bosko cartoon of the same name was erroneously sent overseas for remastering as well--almost as if the people in charge of the bulk remastering didn't care or know the difference.)

Speaking of which, on May 23 it was the beginning of a new era, as HBO Max was finally and officially relaunched and rebranded as simply "Max." Offering a deluge of basic-cable programming from the Discovery networks and pushing them front and center, the updated app also did away with the simple browse-and-search interface of old, opting instead for a more-curated, categorized presentation similar to Netflix. As if making it harder to find quality content was the primary intent, all of HBO Max's former "hubs" were pushed off the main menu, tucked neatly away at the very bottom of the main scrolling screen. And perhaps most telling of all, the Looney Tunes hub button vanished completely.

(As far as television was concerned, the classic Looney Tunes shorts and especially the Max remasters were being given significant attention on Weigel Broadcasting's MeTV network of digital subchannels, even commanding a whole hour of its Saturday morning block like on broadcast networks of old. Little did the public know that plans were in the works to greatly expand this collaboration between Weigel and Warner.)

Just a week later it was the day Looney Tunes fans were waiting patiently for (or as patiently as possible), as Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 1 was finally released. Only two months after it was first announced was the disc now in everyone's hands, and it still seemed like a dream come true. Choice cartoons from the late 1940s through the 1950s, almost every single title a bonafide classic. And for the diehard collectors still the little odds and ends like the Three Bears shorts, Tale of Two Mice, and Arthur Davis's weird Sylvester entries like Catch as Cats Can.

Ironically, it was the inclusion of Catch as Cats Can that delayed Collector's Choice's release by a year, as Warner Bros. had to secure the original nitrate negative from the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Since nitrate film is highly flammable, the Library of Congress needed to wait until the winter of 2022 before it could be shipped to California safely. It wouldn't be the last time Warner Archive resorted to desperate measures to secure a Looney Tunes cartoon.

For George Feltenstein, even the disc presentations was deemed a small victory. As he told the Extras podcast, "I was so happy when I saw the menu for this, and it was addressing them as 'shorts,' not 'episodes.' That's the dead giveaway of people who don't respect theatrical cartoons."

The first Looney Tunes star finally makes it to high definition, as Bosko stars in 1931's Dumb Patrol, included as an extra on Warner Archive's Blu-ray of the pre-Code thriller Safe in Hell.

If there was any concern, it was that apart from the one or two shorts newly remastered specifically for this release such as Catch as Cats Can and Beanstalk Bunny, the disc was in fact using the masters originally prepared for HBO Max--despite Jerry Beck's original assurance of otherwise. This unfortunately meant that--despite nevertheless being remastered--whatever was used for HBO Max was going to have substandard picture or sound native to those copies, things that could only ultimately be fixed by going to the original elements. (This was especially true for any titles from the former Turner package.) And of course, this also meant that Warner Archive had to be on the lookout for the notorious "Photoshopped" titles that plagued the HBO Max masters for years by now. An effort was at least made to present title sequences as correctly as possible, as any extra Photoshopping done to a title's edges was negated by simply zooming in to crop it out.

A more material concern affected customers overseas, as the Blu-ray was only being made available for sale in U.S. shops such as Amazon and Movie Zyng. The disc itself wasn't region-coded and could be watched on any player, but that was cold comfort for international fans who couldn't easily import the Archive's American product without heftier shipping fees. This had become an unfortunate side effect of the Warner Archive's business model, which flourished under domestic management and distribution but continually struggled to find international vendors capable of handling not only the massive catalog but also the steady release schedule. Although the Archive had fairly recently launched a UK site for European consumers, its release calendar was far behind its domestic counterpart, not even to the point of offering the previous Popeye or Tex Avery titles. And also unlike the Popeye and Avery releases, Warner Archive was further narrowing the compilation's exposure by not offering a concurrent DVD version.

Regardless, sales were incredible, especially for a cartoon collection available exclusively online through a boutique label. The Blu-ray.com web site reported that in its first week of release, Collector's Choice Vol. 1 was in the top ten of all Blu-ray sales, standing alongside recent blockbusters like Creed III and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

And while Warner Archive was delighting Looney Tunes fans, Studio Distribution Services went back to its tried-and-true practice of offering warmed-over leftovers at retail. This was no more evident than with the June 6 release of the Best of WB 100: Looney Tunes 10-Film Collection. Priced at a whopping seventy dollars, the set squeezed ten Looney Tunes feature films onto just four discs.

Both Space Jam movies were included, as was Back in Action and the umpteenth release of the likes of Daffy Duck's Quackbusters and the thoroughly beaten-to-death Friz Freleng's Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie. But room was also made for all of the direct-to-video movies, including the still fairly recent King Tweety. As if presenting the 46-minute Bah, Humduck! in even the same universe as an actual feature-length film wasn't awkward enough, noticeably absent from the set were two actual theatrically released movies, Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales and Warner's first Looney Tunes feature, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie.

Granted both movies were still in print--tucked away as part of the Spotlight Collection Volumes 1-3 set--but ever since they were first released on DVD back in 2005 as the two-disc Looney Tunes Movie Collection they have always been divorced from the rest of the feature films. And this odd separation only affected North American releases, as overseas not only had The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie and 1001 Rabbit Tales been released as individual discs but were also combined in any number of ways with a variety of other titles. For a set that purported to be part of the celebration of the studio's legacy, which title was deemed more essential, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie or King Tweety??

Strangely, there was yet another, even more recent, omission from the Looney Tunes 10-Film Collection: a brand new Looney Tunes movie! Released on the very same day, Taz: Quest for Burger was an original production running a little over an hour, focusing on a young bandicoot who befriends a bumbling, somewhat goofy Taz on a mission to maintain a delicate balance between predators and prey in her village. Continuing on the path set by last year's King Tweety, Quest for Burger was designed in an art style altogether new to a Looney Tunes production, sort of a rougher-around-the-edges cross between the likes of Jellystone! and ThunderCats Roar, perhaps to fit the "sloppier" style of its star character.

Not that many people were going to easily appreciate the attempt, because unlike with King Tweety, Taz: Quest for Burger was being made available exclusively as a paid download. No DVD release, no concurrent Max stream, nothing. With no official word from the studio as to why this strategy was taken, one can only speculate--did King Tweety underperform? Was this an experiment from SDS to try to shift operations away from physical media? Regardless, Quest for Burger came without fanfare--reviews were few and far between, and any attempts at talkback threads on forums or web sites were met with dead silence. For now, Taz's quest had ended.

Warner Archive spent the summer continuing to delight classic movie fans, and Looney Tunes fans happily went along for the ride--even if the results were not always optimal. Two classic Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam cartoons--Big House Bunny and Sahara Hare--were set to make their HD debuts in late June on the Archive's Blu-rays for Caged! and Land of the Pharaohs, respectively. Unfortunately, the only HD version of Big House Bunny that was readily available was a thoroughly mangled master from HBO Max, with not only the obligatory Photoshopped titles but also an atrocious new audio mix. Meanwhile, the release of Land of the Pharaohs would inexplicably get bumped a month, at which point Sahara Hare was nowhere to be found on the disc.

There was better luck, however, if one was a fan of the black and white 1930s Merrie Melodies. July's release of the 1931 western Cimarron included the HD debuts of two of the earliest entries in that series, Red-Headed Baby and the historic, rarely broadcast first Merry Melody, Lady, Play Your Mandolin! The Blu-ray also marked Red-Headed Baby's authentic debut on disc, as when Warner Home Video had previously included the cartoon on past DVD issues of Cimarron they used a colorized version prepared by Turner Entertainment in 1992--only with the color turned off to create a black and white effect. This was followed in August by Warner Archive's release of the 1933 Little Women, which featured the HD debut of The Organ Grinder.

The end of August also saw a more direct animation release from the Archive, the Blu-ray debut of the 1962 animated feature Gay Purr-ee. Co-written by Chuck Jones and directed by Jones animator Abe Levitow, this was the movie that ironically cost the former his decades-long job at the studio, as it was produced not by Warner Bros. but by celebrated independent studio UPA--unfortunately for Jones, Warners ended up with the distribution rights and fired him after learning he had been moonlighting to work on it. Now over a half-century later, the movie's connection to the Looney Tunes franchise was made more apparent with the disc's special features: Jones's Oscar-winning For Scent-imental Reasons and the HD debuts of French Rarebit and Louvre Come Back to Me!

As if to suggest the increased use of classic Warner Bros. animation was intentional and a coordinated strategy leading up to something special, September 18 brought the news that everyone had been waiting on pins and needles for: the announcement of the Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 2 on Blu-ray, set for November 28. Unlike the bits and pieces of information that teased the first entry, Warner Archive made a concerted effort to break the Internet with the news. George Feltenstein was scheduled to appear on the next Extras podcast to hype up the release, and the label's Facebook page wasted no time to get the full list of cartoons out.

The star of Chuck Jones's one-shot The Eager Beaver appears on the Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 2 Blu-ray. Unfortunately, the cartoon would have a sync issue with its soundtrack, one of a number of problems that would come from Warner Archive's reliance on masters prepared overseas for HBO Max.

And what a list! The Archive was upping its ante a bit, offering twenty-five titles as opposed to volume one's twenty. While not as all-star-heavy as the first volume, it was still promising to be a great mix of the various eras. Tex Avery was well represented with the likes of Cross Country Detours and Hamateur Night, there were Frank Tashlin wartime works like Behind the Meat-Ball and Brother Brat, the Tweety shorts Catty Cornered and The Rebel Without Claws were set to finally make their non-Japanese debuts on disc, fans would finally be getting a black and white cartoon with Norm McCabe's Daffy's Southern Exposure, and there was a particular focus on mid-1940s one-shots by Chuck Jones such as The Eager Beaver, Fair and Worm-er, and From Hand to Mouse, among others. Meanwhile, two of Jones's later films were making their debuts on home video, Hare-Breadth Hurry and Lickety-Splat. Of the twenty-five announced shorts, sixteen would be making their debuts on disc, while the others would be much-needed upgrades--including a proper remastering of Robert McKimson's One Meat Brawl, which was last seen "remastered" on the Porky & Friends: Hilarious Ham DVD sourced from a Turner Broadcasting master, complete with the tacked-on "DUBBED VERSION" end tag from the company's 1995 transfers. The fact that Feltenstein and Jerry Beck were looking at previously released cartoons they felt could be done better was reassuring to the collectors that the Collector's Choice series was truly targeting.

Unfortunately, the excitement was tempered a bit a month later, as in late October Warner Archive had to announce that the release of Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 2 was going to be delayed a month, now set to arrive at the end of the year on December 12. Bugs and the gang weren't alone in this, though, as a number of other Archive titles were facing release setbacks, and all for the most ironic reason. Despite news articles and media reports spending the bulk of the decade declaring that physical media was dead, the one remaining major disc-replicating factory, Allied Vaughn, was becoming overwhelmed with new orders! Allied handled replicating for not only Warner Archive but also practically every other outfit in town, from heavy-hitters like Disney, Sony, and Warner proper through SDS to all of the other boutique labels like Shout! Factory, Kino Lorber, Arrow Video, and many others.

Describing it as a "production clogline," George Feltenstein stressed that the delays did not mean any title was in danger of not coming out. On the contrary, he felt that by holding off on an immediate release then Warner Archive can ensure that a disc would be as error-free as possible than if it was simply rushed through production to meet an arbitrary street date. Even despite the delays, Feltenstein was optimistic about the future, hinting that he and the Archive "plan to expand our animation activities in 2024, read into that what you may."

But first, and while everyone was now waiting a little bit longer for the return of the Collector's Choice series, it was business as usual at Warner Archive, which spent the fourth quarter of 2023 continuing the once-Feltenstein-loathed practice of using cartoons as Blu-ray special features. And like before, there was again a particular focus on the studio's earliest years.

A few cartoons such as One More Time and The Booze Hangs High were simply the same HD remasters from when the titles were first released on DVD back during the Golden Collection series, but elsewhere there were still some surprises along the way. Just in time for Halloween, October saw the release of 1936's creepy sci-fi flick The Devil Doll, supported in part by the home video debut of the black and white Looney Tune The Phantom Ship starring Beans and Ham and Ex. In December the Blu-ray of 1932's Tarzan the Ape Man included the remastered debut of the very early Merrie Melodies entry Moonlight for Two, which was last seen on disc over a decade before as an off-the-shelf extra.

Once again, the wealth of new HD shorts was still due to the bulk-remastering done for HBO Max, and as has been the norm the results varied wildly. December's release of the 1942 boxing biopic Gentleman Jim included the home video debut of Norm McCabe's quirky one-shot Hobby Horse-Laffs, but with yet another Photoshopped title sequence. That same month's The Great Ziegfeld featured the HD debut of the Merrie Melody Toy Town Hall, but with clumsily re-edited titles ending with a harsh crossfade to the cartoon's title card (originally the title and credits appear over the normal bullseye rings before a radio backdrop appears).

When shown on HBO Max, the early Merry Melody I Wish I Had Wings had an odd audio mix that muted out all of the characters' dialogue. Thankfully when it was included as an extra on Warner Archive's Blu-ray of 1932's Tarzan the Ape Man, the problem was fixed.

And on the other end of the spectrum, a major HBO Max error was actually corrected! In addition to Moonlight for Two, Tarzan the Ape Man also included the charming Merrie Melody I Wish I Had Wings, which unfortunately had been remastered for HBO Max using an older Turner Broadcasting copy with an international audio mix, so when streamed on the service all of the short's spoken dialogue was muted out. Amazingly on the Blu-ray this was fixed--or, HBO Max had merely misprogrammed its audio channels. Regardless, a rare win from the otherwise often-problematic HBO Max remasters was noteworthy in of itself.

Unfortunately, to balance out that win came a devastating loss, as on November 9, Warner Bros. announced that the completed feature film Coyote vs. Acme would follow the steps of Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt and be withheld from release. The studio was upfront about its intentions--it was preparing to use the production as a $30 million tax write-off.

Like with Batgirl, the filmmakers and cast were baffled by the chain of events. Wile E. Coyote voice actor Eric Bauza did not mask his anger at the move, taking to social media and talking to any interviewer who would listen to drum up public support for the film's release. Director Dave Green tried to launch what he called his own "PR campaign" to get people within the industry interested in seeing the movie.

Warner Bros. Discovery and particularly David Zaslav became the targets of intense criticism both online and off, even more so than when the studio treated Batgirl or Scooby the same way. Cartoon fans were joined by filmmakers, writers, actors, and other artists in expressing angry disbelief that the studio would continue to treat its productions this way, especially now something so innocuous and only mildly anticipated. The wholesale shelving of product even led to U.S. Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas to suggest that the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department should start investigating what the heck is going on at Warners under Zaslav. As Castro wrote on his Twitter account, "it's like burning down a building for the insurance money."

In an attempt to save face, Warner Bros. Discovery began soliciting offers from other studios that may be interested in picking up the distribution rights. Private screenings of Coyote vs. Acme were held for executives at such outlets as Sony, Amazon, Netflix, and Paramount, with the latter two even reportedly making formal bids for the movie. Warner would reject all offers, claiming that they weren't enough for the studio to break even (they were hoping for offers in the $75-80 million range)--on a movie they were planning to shelve and write off for a tax credit, mind you. Sadly it wouldn't be the last time a rescue attempt was needed for a Looney Tunes feature film.

As if treating one of their longest and most beloved franchises as deduction fodder wasn't infuriating enough, Warner Bros. delivered a one-two punch just weeks later by having Max announce that all classic Looney Tunes content was set to leave the platform at the end of December. The online fury and panic stemmed from Coyote vs. Acme was dwarfed by this news, with calls on social media for boycotts of the service.

Interestingly, the official Max public-relations account had to quickly take to Twitter to alleviate concerns. "Looney Tunes was included in error," the account tweeted. Error or not, the immediate about-face led to a number of news outlets such as MSN, IGN, Variety, Deadline.com, and others to start examining why it seemed as if David Zaslav had it out for Bugs and the gang. George Feltenstein's original encouragement that Zaslav was "one of us" started to ring more and more hollow with each passing day, and with each new day fans were left to wonder how much longer it would be before the Looney Tunes' days were truly numbered on Max.

With the Looney Tunes being at the center of constant widespread panic for the better part of the month, the December 12 release of Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 2 couldn't have come soon enough for fans. Warner Archive was able to deliver a calming oasis from all the fretting and hand-wringing. And there was much in the compilation to please the diehard collectors, from a good chunk of 1940s Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng shorts, to almost all of the remaining color Frank Tashlin films, to two more steps closer to getting all of the Bugs Bunny cartoons remastered and out onto disc.

The set was not without its critics, though. Apart from Tashlin's short Brother Brat and the Jones one-shot Ghost Wanted, everything was sourced from the masters prepared for HBO Max, and as in the past any inherent issues those copies had were still present regardless of cleanup. Friz Freleng's The Wacky Worm, for example, still looked particularly grimy. The audio mix for The Eager Beaver was also concerningly out of sync, with the problem being most apparent during a gag in which the beavers' tree-chopping is set to music. But in general the biggest gripe was the set's overreliance on one-shots; not even half of the cartoons starred any recurring character. For a lot of collectors and completists that wasn't a dealbreaker, but for some more casual fans they were hoping for more of an all-star potpourri rather than a mixed bag that played like a block of random cartoons on TNT in the 1990s.

If there was any silver lining to it all, it's that the response and sales were nevertheless overwhelmingly positive, and Warner Archive was already hard at work on a third volume for 2024--and it was coming soon!

The announcement appeared on Facebook on January 22, barely allowing fans to catch their breath. Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 3 was being readied for a March 12 release, just an unbelievably quick three months after its predecessor. And like with the previous volume, Warner Archive was getting everything out at once, including the full content list.

Twenty-five more cartoons would populate volume three, eighteen of which had never been put on DVD or Blu-ray before. Raising the stakes even more from its predecessors, six cartoons were brand new to home video, including three Bugs Bunny shorts! Bugs would be represented with Elmer's Pet Rabbit, Pre-Hysterical Hare, Wet Hare, and Dumb Patrol--none of it being A-list Bugs but still getting incredibly closer to getting the wabbit's full filmography out on disc. Some historic landmarks would also be present such as Honeymoon Hotel, the first color Warner Bros. cartoon, and The Mouse on 57th Street, the final cartoon Michael Maltese had written for the studio. Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf were set to make their return to home video with Sheep Ahoy, and Tweety would be seen via Tugboat Granny, one of the few post-1948 shorts that were skipped for the Japanese I Love Tweety DVDs. Depending on whether one considers him to be one character or two, there would be a triple-dose of Tex Avery's Egghead including A Feud There Was, which had the first onscreen naming of him as "Elmer Fudd." But perhaps the biggest surprises belonged to Daffy, who would be treated to a new re-remastering of Riff Raffy Daffy (replacing the muddy-looking version from the Porky & Friends: Hilarious Ham DVD) and the disc debuts of two rather politically incorrect titles: Mexican Joyride and China Jones!

Even the cover art reflected how much Warner Archive was stepping up its game. The clip art collages of the first two volumes were being replaced primarily with character images from the actual shorts, owing in part to the access of high resolution elements but also to start suggesting that down the line it's doubtful there will be decades-old licensing poses at the ready for some of the deeper cuts the Archive hoped to include.

Arthur Davis's Riff Raffy Daffy with Daffy and Porky would get a brand new re-remastering for the Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 3 Blu-ray, replacing the previous muddy-looking remaster used for DVD.

But before the third volume could start shipping it was back to the norm at the Archive, which continued to utilize miscellaneous cartoons as bonus features for its feature Blu-rays. January's titles had a particular focus on 1930s Merrie Melodies despite only one of the releases being from that decade itself. The 1937 version of The Prince and the Pauper starring Errol Flynn featured the HD debuts of Plenty of Money and You, Streamlined Greta Green, and A Sunbonnet Blue. Jumping ahead half a century, the Blu-ray for 1991's animated feature Rover Dangerfield also included the disc debut of Friz Freleng's spot-gag Dog Daze. And among the bonuses for the 1996 MTV-produced comedy Joe's Apartment was The Lady in Red. In most cases, these were again all masters prepared for HBO Max and most of them contained some sort of Photoshopping to their title sequences, but amazingly the one surprise came from The Lady in Red, which had its original titles restored after having been seen only as a "Blue Ribbon" reissue since the early 1950s.

But a cartoon as a special feature was a mere quick distraction because March 12 had arrived, as did the Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 3 on Blu-ray. Even when fans got off the beaten path of Bugs, Daffy, and Tweety, they found a variety of gems on the disc. The 1930s Merrie Melodies were spotlighted with I Only Have Eyes for You and Mr. and Mrs. Is the Name, some more of Friz Freleng's still-missing-in-action wartime work was unearthed with Hop, Skip and a Chump and The Sheepish Wolf, there was Chuck Jones's 1940s one-shots Quentin Quail and Saddle Silly, and completists got the home video debut of the key Foghorn Leghorn short Of Rice and Hen. It was a great mix that seemed to learn a bit from the mistakes of volume two.

And like with the first two volumes, any problems with the cartoons stemmed from the fact that the Archive was still predominately using the HBO Max masters, but to their credit they were trying to catch errors as they went along, usually to the various Photoshopped opening titles. Those for the likes of Cinderella Meets Fella and Punch Trunk looked noticeably better, and Hobo Bobo had undergone some restoration after long being seen on television as a Blue Ribbon reissue. But then on the other end There Auto Be a Law retained a very lazy HBO-created edit where the WB shield circle-wipes into place instead of actually zooming in. Things were getting better with each release, but it was still far from perfect.

The greatest care on the whole set was given to the two Daffy Duck shorts directed by Arthur Davis, Mexican Joyride and Riff Raffy Daffy. Not only were they the only two titles specifically remastered for the Blu-ray, but both provided something of a treasure hunt for George Feltenstein and Jerry Beck.

A former staple of Turner's cable networks, Mexican Joyride is a relatively inoffensive cartoon, centering more on Daffy's involvement in a bullfight than actual Mexican cultural stereotypes. The short was so generally accepted that it appeared on MGM's first wave of Cartoon Moviestars videos back in the day, but in the wake of uproars over Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips appearing on VHS, over Ted Turner considering Speedy Gonzales to be racist, over Pepé le Pew being reexamined in a "woke" culture, and even over the cancellation of the Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Volume Two, Mexican Joyride had been quietly shelved; guilt by association. It had been so overlooked that when Feltenstein and Beck were getting ready to remaster the short for the Blu-ray they made the chilling discovery that Warner Bros. didn't have a 35mm print of the title in any of its archives--in fact, a hard target search revealed that no 35mm materials existed anywhere! Amazingly, the original nitrate negative still survived, and that's what was used for the Blu-ray.

Riff Raffy Daffy, meanwhile, wasn't so lucky. The original negative had been missing since the 1960s when backup elements were made, likely for television. Every subsequent print had a rough, grainy look to it, even the original "remastered" version seen on the Porky & Friends: Hilarious Ham DVD. Warner Archive at one point seriously considered pulling the title from the program before discovering a nitrate Super Cinecolor 35mm print in the vault. It was going to be the best possible source they had access to, and even if not from the negative the difference between the new remaster and previous attempts was like night and day.

Reviews were again glowing, and the Looney Tunes gang once again made the top twenty on Blu-ray sales charts. By this point, any further discussion of the future of the Collector's Choice series wasn't so much "if" but "when." The only real speculation surrounded our favorite wascally wabbit: with so few Bugs Bunny shorts left to remaster and release, was the studio ready to start biting the bullet and delivering the likes of Fresh Hare, Horse Hare, A-Lad-in His Lamp, or dare we say, All This and Rabbit Stew??

Until then, the spring and summer contained some surprises, some twists and turns, and even the unexpected announcement of the launch of the MeTV Toons all-classic-cartoon television network! Warner Archive continued to deliver on its acclaimed line of Blu-rays of classic films, such as its release of 1932's The Mask of Fu Manchu starring Boris Karloff. Originally set for an April 30 release, the title was delayed a week due to the returning backlog issues the Archive's replicating partner, Allied Vaughn, once again faced. Two more classic Merrie Melodies were making their disc debuts, the black and white entries Freddy the Freshman and The Queen Was in the Parlor--and both with the now-customary HBO Max Photoshopped titles.

While Warner Archive was dealing with a rash of new delays on their June and July titles, there was an exciting Looney Tunes update on the theatrical front. Coyote vs. Acme was still lingering in limbo, with no outside studio willing to pay Warner's inexplicable $80 million asking price, but another Looney Tunes feature film was being readied for release. Originally intended for release on HBO Max, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie seemed like it was facing certain doom when it was among the host of largely animated productions that had been shelved by Warner Bros. back in mid-2022. Thankfully, the animation department was free to continue developing the movie with the hope of it being picked up elsewhere, with GFM Animation signed on to handle distribution sales.

Incredibly, unlike that other completed feature film starring a Looney Tunes character, The Day... was actually unleashed onto the public, having a world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France. Response was so positive that Warner Bros. quickly snatched up the distribution rights...to their own film...but only for parts of Europe. Picking up the slack for North America was a much smaller outfit called Ketchup Entertainment, which generally handled decidedly smaller-scope fare (think Canadian-produced horror movies and unfunny spoofs from the guys who started the ...Movie series) but as of late was making a name for itself giving wide releases to mainstream projects that had been more or less cast aside by larger companies. In the previous year the studio scored U.S. distribution deals for Michael Mann's biopic Ferrari, Robert Rodriguez's thriller Hypnotic with Ben Affleck, and the latest in the seemingly neverending series of Hellboy reboots. (Ketchup would eventually give up trying to book Hellboy: The Crooked Man into theaters and just dump it onto video-on-demand platforms.) But now with an A-list property from an A-list studio in its possession, Ketchup was poised to have its most significant release yet...and all because David Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery management didn't think it could turn a profit streaming on HBO Max, the platform that enticed Discovery to buy the company in the first place.

Meanwhile, the Allied Vaughn setbacks continued to affect Warner Archive releases, with more titles becoming delayed. Strangely, this also coincided with some last-minute switcheroos, usually in regard to the cartoon special features. Some of these changes were so abrupt and at the eleventh hour that they weren't even reflected on the titles' back covers!

June's release of Alfred Hitchcock's romantic comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith was originally set to include the disc debuts of The Cat's Tale and Sport Chumpions but instead contained HD upgrades for Holiday Highlights and Stage Fright. Raoul Walsh's 1947 noir-ish The Man I Love swapped out double-dips of Roughly Squeaking and Slick Hare with the similarly dipped Rabbit Transit and the HD debut of Crowing Pains. The Joan Crawford-starred adaptation of the Broadway play The Shining Hour did include its announced extras of an embarrassingly Photoshopped Love and Curses and The Sneezing Weasel, but it also randomly added an HD version of the unremastered transfer of Porky's Five & Ten from the Porky Pig 101 set. And just for good measure, the Blu-ray of the 1949 MGM noir film Act of Violence had no announced extras, but it nevertheless snuck on the disc debut of The Shell-Shocked Egg.

With all of this back-and-forthing, it was probably no surprise then when Warner Archive originally announced the Blu-ray for the 1939 comedy Idiot's Delight starring Clark Gable and Norma Shearer as coming out on July 30, only at the end of that month to bump it back to August 13. The HD debuts of 1939's The Good Egg and (again) an unremastered version of It's an Ill Wind from Porky Pig 101 were scheduled as the extras, but the Archive had something bigger and better to announce for cartoon fans.

With the title of "Yes, it is happening.....," on July 30 Warner Archive again took to Facebook to reveal what everyone had been hoping, that Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 4 was indeed on its way. Though nothing in the way of actual details were included, one thing was made clear: a street date, with plans for the Blu-ray to come out on November 26, just in time for the holiday season.

Two agonizing months went by before Warner Archive finally revealed the fourth volume's content list on September 30. Twenty-five cartoons were announced for the disc's main program, eighteen of which were new to disc and seven of which were entirely new to home video. And like with previous volumes, the remainder were cartoons that had only been released unremastered or as extras.

Bugs was represented with arguably his final cartoon left to release that wouldn't be considered politically incorrect, the 1963 cheater Devil's Feud Cake. The disc was also promising the excellent earthquake-pilled Road Runner entry Hopalong Casualty, along with the equally "How was this not released yet?" classic Foghorn Leghorn short Henhouse Henery. The Tweety series offered the non-Japanese disc debut of Muzzle Tough along with the cult favorite Hyde and Go Tweet, which was finally being seen remastered after turning up from a VHS transfer back on the Bugs Bunny's Lunar Tunes/Marvin the Martian: Space Tunes Double Feature DVD. The very early Sylvester cartoon Peck Up Your Troubles was getting remastered after decades of dirty-looking prints showing on television. There were the Goofy Gophers, Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, even a few Tex Avery cartoons--all resulting in a fun, eclectic mix. Fans were even getting a Speedy cartoon from the DePatie-Freleng era with Road to Andalay!

But it seemed that the most love was given to Daffy, who still had a lot left in his filmography to mine. The 1940s fan-favorites Along Came Daffy and Holiday for Drumsticks were finally seeing a disc release (the latter hadn't even turned up on Max), Robert McKimson's Muscle Tussle was finally being remastered after previously turning up as an off-the-shelf bonus cartoon, and Quack Shot and the original black and white version of The Impatient Patient were finally debuting on home video.

In addition to the twenty-five shorts, for the first time in the series two bonus cartoons would also be present! Specifically meant to rectify their previous, cropped-to-widescreen versions back on the first two Looney Tunes Super Stars DVDs, both Stork Naked and Lighter Than Hare would be presented in full frame. Jerry and George explained to the Extras podcast that categorizing the two as bonus cartoons was a way to preserve the idea of the main program being reserved especially for remastered disc debuts. All in all, Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 4 was looking to be another essential addition to fans' libraries.

The fix for classic cartoons couldn't have come soon enough, as that same day Warner Bros. shut down their Boomerang streaming app, a move they had announced at the beginning of August. Customers were advised to consider switching over to Max, where they claimed a lot of the content would move over to (but even their own announcement was stressing that not everything would). Just a week after their initial heads-up did Cartoon Network's official web site cease operations as well, removing all of the kid-friendly content and mini-games and such and just becoming a landing page for people to sign up for (again) Max. Both of the actual Cartoon Network and Boomerang cable channels were operating like normal, but viewers were understandably starting to fear the worst about the future of either. Though Warner Bros. Discovery would never come right out and say it, it was clear that licensing animated content to the likes of Tubi, MeTV, and now MeTV Toons was becoming far more profitable for the corporation than the costs and labor of running their own all-cartoon outlets.

Amazingly, apart from all the dedicated Looney Tunes titles over the years, there are still numerous miscellaneous releases out there featuring the characters. Bugs's many modern-day cameos on such series as Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and even Batman: The Animated Series have been released by Warner Home Video, while his appearance in the independent short A Political Cartoon has been made available on Kino's Cartoongate! VHS. Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote were seen on Shout! Factory's The Best of the Electric Company DVDs, and of course the entire gang has been featured on all of the various releases of Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit--and that's still just scratching the surface!

The future of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts on home video remains murky, much like the industry itself. Physical media sales have been in a freefall for many years as consumers seem to prefer the immediacy and convenience of digital downloads and streaming. Brick-and-mortar retail outlets have been providing less and less shelf space to sell DVDs and Blu-rays, while the major studios have been limiting their physical releases primarily to recent blockbusters and A-list catalog titles. For companies big and small, the focus has been on streaming and instant video--which in one way is good because remastering content for digital use provides a ready-made version for potential release, but the downside is that with no actual physical version, consumers are left to their own devices to try to make their own hard-copy collection for private use and keepsaking...and regardless of a paid purchase or not, a content owner can revoke a consumer's access to digital material whenever they feel like it.

Where home video is thriving is with smaller, more-boutique labels that license programming from the larger studios, but even still they're often at the mercy of whatever transfers and material they receive. While Warner Bros. has worked with such companies in the past to release licensed content, the Looney Tunes franchise is still considered too valuable of a brand for the corporation to let one of the little guys handle (and profit from).

The cartoon library itself is in a particularly sticky spot given its sheer size and other factors. Even with all the work done for HBO Max, there are still well over a hundred titles yet to be remastered--and even more so when factoring in all of the off-the-shelf shorts from the Porky Pig 101 set. When produced in-house, it used to cost Warner Bros. approximately $15,000 to remaster a single cartoon, and it's unknown if the studio would take the initiative to finish the catalog without a purpose in mind. (Not even the release of a big-budget major motion picture starring the characters was enough to get the machine going again for regular, new Looney Tunes home video product.) Warner Home Video and its divisions used to proudly claim that they would only use remastered elements for a main program, but the uproar over Porky Pig 101 and the problematic HBO Max versions turning up on disc seem to suggest that quality control is at best inconsistent. To the studio's credit, in a few scant cases certain films have been redone, but a lot of others that have been released still fall into a sort of "good enough for now" category.

Thankfully, all of the doom and gloom has been lessened by the presence of Warner Archive, which is now free to release not just the Looney Tunes cartoons but almost all of the studio's other classic animated properties. Now, that doesn't mean they have carte blanche, as the unit is still part of a bigger corporate machine, so they have budgets and bottom lines like any business. The Archive needs to be able to release product that of course entices classic movie fans but can also be marketed to a general consumer base; in short, they need to sell. Sure, a completist may be fine with a Blu-ray of nothing but Cool Cat and Buddy, but how does the Archive market that outside of the cartoon-fan bubble? Even with the whole output at their disposal, Warner's legal department has deemed far too many entries in the series to be too "controversial" for retail release. The Archive has been trying to loosen things up and the occasional China Jones has been able to sneak by, but in an age where strangers are looking to "cancel" anything, certain titles might forever be a bridge too far.

After four decades of video releases, fans remain hungry for more, still wanting to amass a complete, fully authorized, uncut collection. But with Warner Bros. fully owning all the films and refusing to license them out to a third party distributor, it's all in their tangled corporate hands. They can either let Warner Archive continue to find some way to make further releases marketable and profitable, or they can wait for another innovation in home entertainment and just start all over again.

As the home video market has faced a number of twists and turns, the Warner Bros. cartoons have (reluctantly) been along for the ride, surviving two tape formats and three major disc formats. It's a clear testament to the quality and longevity of the cartoons and characters that they continue to find an audience with each new format. Bugs, Daffy, and the gang will no doubt continue to be a viable property on home video, however it evolves--no doubt until the bitter end of the industry itself.

But what does that mean for the dedicated fans waiting in the wings? Can they remain so patient, or will their dreams be dashed to bits on the jagged rocks below? Will cartoon lovers young and old actually one day be able to own all thousand-plus Looney Tunes to cherish and share with their families?

Ehhhh, it's a possibility!