‘Westworld’: HBO Max CEO Talks Reason For Cancellation & Why It Was Removed From Catalog

We learned a few months ago that HBO Max had not only canceled “Westworld,” was about to disappear from the catalog of the streaming service. As if his fans weren’t enough to deal with the sci-fi series’ untimely end, they also have to accept that they can’t relive the four seasons that make up the project, at least through the platform that was once his home.

In an interview with Variety, HBO Max CEO Casey Bloys revealed that both the decision to cancel it and to remove it from the platform are motivated by economic reasons: “The conversation was, what’s the right amount of money for streaming? That means, what’s the right amount of money for the HBO Max original series? And the backlog speaks, Does every series we have on HBO Max have to be exclusive to HBO Max? I would say no. People forget that the history of television was DVDs. They are expensive series to make. The idea that they’ll stay in a catalog forever for $15 a month… TV never worked like that.”

‘Westworld’ is not the only HBO Max series that, in addition to being canceled, has disappeared from the streaming platform. Some of these projects do not have a physical edition for their preservation, but other television services have acquired the rights to broadcast them. In the case of ‘Westworld’, its four seasons are available in DVD format and, in the United States, the series can be streamed through ad-free platforms such as Tubi and The Roku Channel, as well as being rented or purchased digitally. However, In Spain there is no legal way to stream or rent/purchase “Westworld” digitally.

A new opportunity

In the same interview with Variety, the CEO of HBO Max defended that getting rid of ‘Westworld’, among other series, and thus finding a free streaming platform with ads, is a new opportunity for them: “I think people sometimes forget that there is an overwhelming majority of the population who don’t want to pay anything for a streaming service, not just here, but internationally. In the same way that Netflix was something completely new, let’s launch some series and expose it to a new audience and see how it works. I think you need to dive into the unknown and see what’s out there. I have no idea if free streaming with ads is going to be a big deal, but I know some people don’t want to pay and I’m okay with ads. And that’s a potentially very large and new audience for a show.”

The cancellation and disappearance of ‘Westworld’ is a consequence of the cost reduction plan launched by David Zaslavpresident of Warner Bros. Discovery as of 2021.