HBO's hit sci-fi drama Westworld will reportedly be pulled from HBO Max's streaming library following the show's recent cancellation.
According to Deadline, WarnerMedia is planning on removing all four seasons of HBO's former flagship series from HBO Max along with Joss Whedon's The Nevers, marking the formal cancellation of that series. However, the outlet hears that the back catalogs of both shows will likely "resurface on other company platforms" in the future.
Westworld is the latest series to depart HBO Max amid a slew of cuts as Warner Bros. Discovery undergoes its "end-of-year financial review." The Emmy award-winning series joins numerous other titles that have been removed from HBO Max in recent months as Warner Bros. Discovery has reportedly been looking to cut costs and save on residual payouts.
"As we work toward bringing our content catalogs together under one platform, we will be making changes to the content offering available on both HBO Max and discovery+," a statement from HBO Max read in August when a significant number of titles were shelved. "That will include the removal of some content from both platforms."
It's currently unclear when Westworld will be coming off HBO Max, but news of its removal comes just over a month after the series was cancelled by HBO. The first two seasons were hugely popular and managed to rack up millions of views, however, those numbers started to decline in the third and fourth seasons according to Nielsen figures.
Westworld premiered in 2016 and focused on a Wild West-themed amusement park inhabited by robots that parkgoers could interact and roleplay with. Later seasons saw the robots gain sentience and free themselves from the park to enter the human world, building up a conflict between the two sides.
While IGN called Season 4 a return to form for the series in our review, it evidently wasn't enough for HBO to commit to another season. Especially with new shows like The Last of Us on the horizon.
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/westworld-removed-hbo-max-for-some-reason