Warner Bros. Plans To Demolish Looney Tunes Building

The Looney Tunes don’t seem to be welcome on their home turf these days, and now Warner Bros. seems set to take that even further by literally bulldozing the iconic IP off of its property, according to a recent report.

The Looney Tunes IP has served Warner Bros. well for several decades, with the iconic characters and zany antics managing to remain relevant in the modern day despite originating in the 1930s. Over the years, the franchise has generated content across all sorts of media, from comic books to games and even a few solid theatrically released Looney Tunes movies. The franchise saw a real resurgence in the 70s and more recently in the 2010s, leading into the 2020s. With new content readily available and fans still enjoying much of what’s come in the past, there’s scarcely been a better time period for Bugs Bunny and company.

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Despite this massive bank of renewed cultural capital, IP holders Warner Bros. have handed the franchise some bad turns of late, most recently taking a large chunk of Looney Tunes content off the streaming service Max even as fans celebrate attempts to rescue the Coyote vs. ACME animated film from the company’s attempts to bury it. While Looney Tunes can now catch the removed shows on Tubi, Warner Bros.’ next move won’t be so easily remedied. A recent exclusive report by Deadline has revealed that the company intends to tear down Building 131, the single-story structure that has served as the home of the Looney Tunes on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California, since the very beginning. The report suggests that this demolition plan has been in the works for a while now and could begin as early as next week.

The move is evidently to clear space for new HBO shows filming on the property, but for fans, this sends a pretty clear message when other recent happenings are taken into account. It’s been rumored that Warner Bros. plans to sell off the IP as a way to get rid of the Looney Tunes entirely, and the company’s recent moves don’t do anything to convince fans otherwise. To the contrary, getting rid of programming from the franchise that’s already been on Max and letting it go on a free alternative, then bulldozing the IP’s iconic place on the studio lot, certainly seems to indicate a parting of ways between Warner Bros. and the Looney Tunes. Since not all Looney Tunes content was erased from Max, there’s a chance that the move was done to better align with the company’s focus on family content over pure kids programming, but it doesn’t really add up when one considers the broad appeal that the franchise has had since the very beginning.

There’s no case to be made that the franchise isn’t doing well in modern times, as some of the best Looney Tunes TV shows and feature films have been made pretty recently, including this month’s The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, which has been well received by critics and fans alike. Fans will have to wait and see just how far the new order at Warner Bros. is really willing to go to distance itself from the iconic animated franchise, but destroying such an iconic physical marker of the IP’s presence isn’t a good sign.

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Source: Deadline