John Oliver Crushes HBO For Purging Content, Could His Show Be Next?
John Oliver made fun of Warner Bros. Discovery for dropping the HBO on HBO Max.
John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight, has never been afraid to speak his mind, and he always does so with a grin stretched over his face no matter what he’s dissing, whether it’s the long-running skit comedy series Saturday Night Live, or making fun of the network that runs his show, HBO. While Oliver has swung a slew of well-chosen criticisms at his so-called “business daddy” in the past, this time, the television host was criticizing the network’s streaming name change and how they dropped the HBO from HBO Max and became known as just Max.
According to Deadline, John Oliver opened the late-night show by throwing a punch at the streaming service. “Our business daddy took its content purge up a notch and threw the whole HBO out,” he said. The “content purge” Oliver was referring to is in reference to the many titles Warner Bros. Discovery has been canceling over the past year.
The purge started last summer with the almost completed Batgirl, which would have stared Leslie Grace (Barbara Gordon/Batgirl), Brendan Fraser (Garfield Lynns/Firefly), Ivory Aquino (Barbara’s best friend, Alysia Yeoh), J.K. Simmons (Barbara’s father, Commissioner Jim Gordon), and Michael Keaton (Bruce Wayne/Batman). One of many reasons fans were disappointed in the Batgirl cancelation was because the film would have seen Keaton return to Gotham City as Batman for the first time in 30 years, but fans will still get to see him reprise his iconic role in the upcoming The Flash. When Warner Bros. Discovery announced Batgirl was getting axed, John Oliver openly criticized the move on his show, just as he has now criticized the move to drop HBO from HBO Max.
Warner Bros. Discovery is changing the name of its streaming service to commemorate the merge of Warner Bros.’ HBO Max and Discovery+ content, which will now both be featured on the new Max streaming service. Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content is hopeful that the merger will make Max a one-stop-shop for content, making the platform “have the best-in-all-categories across the board.” However, while the merger might be a great business move for the two companies, it also gives John Oliver more fodder for his own show.
John Oliver has never held his tongue when it came to speaking out against HBO’s parent company. In fact, the show host and comedian has taken plenty of shots at Warner Bros. Discovery, continuously calling the production company out for canceling shows and movies “to appease Wall Street.” And while others might be nervous to call out their employer on national TV, Oliver has no such anxiety because Warner Bros. Discovery is “too busy canceling shows to notice.”
Although, it seems that Warner Bros. Discovery will not hold back in what type of content they’re willing to expunge. If they were willing to delete a nearly finished, highly anticipated movie that already had millions of dollars going into production, then surely canceling a late-night show like John Oliver’s would be no problem. While Oliver doesn’t seem to think he lacks job security, it’s only a matter of time before Warner Bros. Discovery has had enough open criticism from one of its own and decides to take some sort of disciplinary action.
