HBO Max is playing bait-and-switch with its DC superhero movies

In the lead-up to the launch of HBO Max, WarnerMedia put its library of movies featuring DC Comics superheroes front and center as one of the selling points of its new streaming services. Now, just a few weeks afterthe service made its debut, HBO Max has confirmed it will intentionally remove most of those movies at the end of the month and rotate movies in and out of its library each month.

There and gone

With that robust library of DC Comics-inspired films (as well as popular TV series), HBO Max quickly established itself as the must-have streaming service for DC fans.

Beginning July 1, however, its claim to that title could become a lot more questionable.

WarnerMedia has confirmed that the service will lose the DCEU filmsJustice League,Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,Wonder Woman, andSuicide Squad, as well asCatwoman,Jonah Hex, andThe Losers.

It will also lose the entire original Batman film franchise, with 1989’sBatmanand sequelsBatman Returns,Batman Forever, andBatman & Robinall vanishing like the Dark Knight at the end of a conversation.

All of the aforementioned films leaving the service currently feature a note indicating they’ll be “Available until August 18, 2025,” after which they’ll depart the platform for an unspecified length of time.

Slim pickings

JustAquamanandShazam!will remain from the nine-film DCEU franchise after June 30 unless WarnerMedia adds the conspicuously-absent-at-launchMan of Steelor recent releaseBirds of Preyat some point in July. The only other live-action DC Comics movies that were present at launch and will remain so in July are the Oscar darlingJoker, 2011’sGreen Lantern,and 1984’sSupergirl.

That can and will change, though, according to reports — just not in the way you might expect.

HBO giveth and taketh away

While early speculation suggested the films were disappearing from HBO Max due to prior licensing deals, it appears now that the move is an intentional one.

“We have a collection of DC films that will rotate on the platform,” a spokesperson for HBO Max toldComicBook.com. “We have a new batch coming in July and then another batch coming in August.”

While nothing is official at this point, WarnerMedia apparently has a very different strategy in mind for how it plans to handle content on HBO Max.Deadlineand other industry news outlets have indicated that WarnerMedia plans to rotate content into and out of HBO Max on a monthly basis, removing batches of content periodically as it adds other content.

A risky move

Streaming audiences have become accustomed to licensing issues playing into early content change-ups like this, but that doesn’t seem to be at play with the DC Comics movies on HBO Max. All of the films were not only on the service at launch, but are also owned by WarnerMedia, which has given no indication that they’re honoring prior deals with the films’ removal.

If the content shuffle on HBO Max does indeed come down to WarnerMedia simply wanting to give the service a more fluid, ever-changing library, theservice’s rough startcould get a lot rougher in the months to come.