In their continuing effort to save money and trim their streaming service, HBO Max-which will soon be rebranded as Max- has decided to remove Brendon Smalls and Adult Swim's hit animated series Meatalocalypse, even though the IP has a movie currently in development.
Metalocalypse might not have been included in the first wave of Adult Swim animated originals, but the series became one of the network's flagship shows for a while. Brendon Small's brilliant parody/love letter to the metal genre became so insanely popular that the fictional band in the series started performing tours in real life. At one point, the band's album cracked the Billboard 200's top ten list with Metalocalypse: Dethalbum III.
Similar to its sister shows in Aqua Teen Hunger Force and The Venture Brothers, Metalocalypse was gearing up for a new movie in the HBO Max era. However, Metalocalypse now finds itself sharing a similar fate as other HBO Max animated shows like Final Space and Infinity Train, as the streaming service is set to pull the animated metal parody from its content library. To make matters even more confusing, Dethklok is currently in the middle of planning a live tour. Even though the news is distressing, the fact that Metalocalypse just got the ax and no longer exists is pretty metal.
Warner Discover announced earlier this month that it was pulling a number of animated titles from HBO Max (soon to be just Max on May 23), including Clarence, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Flapjack, Foster's Home, Dexter's Laboratory, Ben 10: Omniverse, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, and Ben 10: Alien Force. Likely the strangest show to be pulled, though, was Metalocalypse.
