Titans, Doom Patrol Both Cancelled at HBO Max After 4 Seasons; James Gunn Says Decision Predates New DC Regime
HBO Max is pulling the plug on Titans and Doom Patrol.
Both shows will come to an end when their respective fourth seasons wrap up later this year, our sister site Deadline reports.
“While these will be the final seasons of Titans and Doom Patrol, we are very proud of these series and excited for fans to see their climactic endings,” an HBO Max spokesperson said in a statement to the trade.
Both shows were given enough notice to craft proper series finales, with Titans boss Greg Walker saying, “We have six episodes left to unleash upon the world that we hope will give our beloved characters the creative closure we all know they deserve.”
UPDATE: James Gunn, who in November became CEO of DC Studios with Peter Safran, noted on Twitter, “The decision to end the series precedes us. But I certainly wish the best for the talented group of creators, actors, and the rest of the crew that produced both shows.”
Titans offers up a gritty take on the Teen Titans franchise as a group of strangers — including Dick Grayson aka Nightwing (played by Brenton Thwaites), Rachel Roth (Teagon Croft), Kori aka Starfire (Anna Diop) and Beast Boy (Ryan Potter) — team up to fight evil and become a surrogate family in the process.
Season 4 found the gang investigating a dark prophecy in Metropolis, which is Superman’s home turf. The fall finale, which aired in December, ended with Sebastian (The Originals’ Joseph Morgan) completing his fulfillment of the Red Moon ritual.
Meanwhile, Doom Patrol centers on a group of offbeat superheroes who all survived horrific accidents and assembled to investigate the strange happenings of the world. The team includes Rita (April Bowlby), Cliff aka Robotman (Brendan Fraser), Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero), Larry aka Negative Man (Matt Bomer) and Cyborg (Jovian Wade). The midseason finale teased the apocalypse to end all apocalypses as the gang gears up for a fight against the big baddie Immortus.
How are you feeling about Titans and Doom Patrol being cancelled? Drop a comment below.
What are HBO Max going to have left? Are they planning to cease or something?
They still have Harley Quinn and Peacemaker.
They also still have house of the dragon and the last of us. I also like the other two but that’s probably not a huge show for them.
House of the Dragon and Last of Us are HBO not HBO Max
FYI.. They are one and the same. After the series airs on HBO, it’s available on HBO Max. :-)
Sorta. But it’s no reason to subscribe to HBO Max instead of HBO. Titans and Doom Patrol (and others) weren’t on HBO the network. The exclusive stuff you get with Max is minimizing. Which is going to make it harder to try and get subscriptions if they want to ween people off of HBO to Max. Right now if you get HBO you generally get Max for free. But if they made that not the case there’s not much reason to have just a Max subscription anymore.
Lookkng more and more that they are winding down the subscription streaming and focus on advertising support free streaming
Either way, they still need content for people to watch. Unfortunately, the only shows they seem to be developing are unscripted reality shows.
These cancellations probably have more to do with James Gunn and his partner taking over as co-heads of DC Studios. They have a specific vision for the future, which hasn’t really shared yet. I guess neither of these shows fit their vision. Plus, I think they wanted DC to have a fresh start with a mostly clean slate. I could be wrong, of course, but this seems the most likely scenario to me.
So, Gunn says these decisions pre date his new role but it has to do with them?
It’s a ….take….
His comment didn’t come until later and was edited in, so it’s not as much of a take as you think. I mean, it would be if someone had made the comment now, but not when Pat made the comment.
I mean it’s a federal law or something, right? A CEO can’t reverse a previous decision. It’s forbidden by God and the US Congress.
WBD’s cost cutting measures means that HBO Max is just going to be streaming reruns of Friends, Big Bang Theory, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl (2007), and Sex and the City.
Not surprising, but disappointing nonetheless… Titans always had such promise but never quite lived up to it while Doom Patrol has been consistently excellent… I have been expecting all the DC legacy shows to end to make room for whatever the new stuff will be.
HBO Max is becoming a joke at this point.
I totally agree!!!
This is NOT even surprising considering the widespread bloodbath they have already shown.
I had already decided to NOT renew my HBO subscription when it ends in April, but by cancelling these 2 shows, it would have cinched my decision, for sure.
There’s going to be nothing left of HBO Max by the time Discovery’s management is through with it. I would have thought it hard to destroy The Warner Brothers properties, but Zalav is certainly doing his best!
Explains why the 2nd half of Season 4 of the Titans was passed for January and February. Need people to hold on to their subscription a little longer.
I’m sad to see Doom Patrol ending, but I’d rather have it finished while it’s telling great stories than have it renewed for lots of seasons and watch it lose itself in the process. I don’t really care much about Titans, it’s a crappy show for me, but sad that the cast and crew are now jobless.
Once again we come back to John Oliver’s quote about how Zaslav is burning down HBO Max for the insurance money.
I’m really hoping Last Week Tonight isn’t next to go.
It’s OK for this year, Season 10 trailer has dropped on Youtube.
It’s gotta be right up HBO’s new alley. Super-duper cheap to produce.
So bummed but not surprised. The end of DC TV is among us.
Looking more and more like anything DC related is ending.
Arrowverse – ending
Supsverse – in Hospice
HBO Max – like someone let Doomsday loose and he’s destroying everything he can.
Movies – Goodbye Cavill and others…
(I suspect that Peacemaker will survive, for obvious reasons- but the rest. ::cue taps::)
What the heck is Supsverse?
If you mean Superman & Lois that was clearly established to be part of the Arrowverse.
Arrowverse adjacent… since it’s an alternate Earth/reality.
Arrowverse is a multiverse has been for years. There is nothing adjacent about it.
Except it was in universe before and now it’s not. (Actually, if you want to get technical, it wasn’t in Supergirl, then it was, then it wasn’t again as its own show). Yes, by multiverse standards anything can be part of the Arrowverse, from the old serials to the Superman movies to all the different Batmens and on. But no one is going to consider them part of the Arrowverse. Just that the Arrowverse is a universe in the DC multiverse. The MCU has a multiverse too, but no one considers those old Spiderman movies part of the MCU, even if the characters appeared as part of the multiverse in the movies. MCU would refer to the their universe as 616 (even though the comics are that so they have two) but it would be in the MCU, but not the MCU universe. So technically, but not really.
I hope that, even if they can’t shoot alternate endings, they alter the (now) series finales to edit out any glaring cliffhangers and try to make it feel more like a proper send-off.
They already have satisfying conclusions set up.
Doubt it. They’ve said they do but they said that about Gossip Girl and Stargirl too and those were lies
Saw it coming but this is a prime example of why im not impressed by the mcu or dcu doing movies AND TV for their cinematic universe. It takes away from other fun outside the box content. Because now everything has to be connected.
Yeah honestly I’m getting tired of all of these extended universes where everything needs to be connected.
Really bummed about the Titans!! it seems as if everytime a decent superhero show is on the air.Someone comes along and axes it..Quality show with great actors…I will miss it
i thought titans was great and a bunch of great actors, a bunch of them could have there own cool spin off type shows ,i always thought
I know that there are people out there who might enjoy the upcoming Gotham knight show but *imo* it looks like the worst the arrowverse had/has to offer and will almost certainly be canceled on the cw. doom patrol was fun bec it didn’t take itself or source material seriously. Titans was… Eh sort of cosplay for superfans.
I’m done with HBO Max.
It figures they’d both be canceled, especially with where things are heading with the merger and the DCU properties, but was hoping they’d both get one more season.
Great forkin’ shirtballs. This is ridiculous. This new leadership is gutting a once proud premium network by pulling the plug on really good entertainment. Titans. (Granted, it doesn’t always maintain solid footing but still…) Doom Patrol. (Probably too delightfully weird for these ***hats…) Hopefully, they leave James Gunn alone and let him create. Throw in basically completed movies and shows (Minx) and it’s just a travesty of what they’re doing to people’s hard work.
The good news is that we’ll now have a higher proportion of reality show dreck to wade through to find the few nuggets left.
Beyond DC, I worry about other shows. This Zavlav fool doesn’t care about anything HBO. Can’t seem them staying enamored with the brilliant John Oliver no matter how many awards they win!
So what I’m hearing is cancel my HBO Max sub. These streaming services all dying except for Hulu and Netflix and they’re cancelling stuff too soon too.
HBO costs more than Netflix. Is it worth more than Netflix. I can’t imagine many people think so. Your mileage may vary.
What’s crazy, is Titans always had the castings and the branding that it could have and should have made it an absolute hit, but the writing always cheapened it to worthlessness and to lower ratings and viewership. The criticism was always for the writers over every season, and yet they STILL managed to get 4! And ultimately the association probably affected Doom Patrol’s ratings for the worst too. What a sad avoidable waste overall.
Well that is the nail in the coffin for me, time to cancell.
No seconds their done
Please do not cancel Titans; many people love this show. The characters, acting, inclusiveness of this show is so important. I hope you listen to the people and make a different decision.
Brendan Fraser is certainly having a roller coaster of a week… If Zaslav really wanted to maximize viewership/profits, he would have waited until after Fraser’s Oscar nomination to start airing the new season of Doom Patrol.
I’m gonna not hold my breath on the second halves of their seasons, just in case
Ditto
fyi, both shows are not cancelled. they’re just ending. there’s a difference between cancellation and ending.
I disagree. If the show’s producers agreed it was time to end the respective series, then I’d agree the shows are ending. This is common with shows that have been on for many seasons and the producers agree they have done the stories and arcs they wanted to do, and often the actors are also ready to move on to other things.
But it’s clear these two shows were not allowed to continue and have in fact been cancelled. I don’t believe any of the producers or actors felt they had told all the stories they could and that it was time to wrap the shows up. I doubt if a true a wrap-up series finale for either was actually written and produced. Everything I’ve heard suggests these two shows were cancelled.
If you read the Deadline article it says that the show runners were told the shows were ending and that both wrote proper conclusion episodes
There’s really three types. 1. Cancelled, see ya, bye. 2. Cancelled, but with warning, so you have time to wrap it up, even if you had more stories to tell. 3. Ending, people working on the show decided they’re hit their conclusion, have no more good stories to tell, have a big finish.
.
I’d say this is firmly in #2.
There is definitely a difference and these shows are cancelled.
Disappointing, but not surprising.
Annoying! Why? The cancel culture continues.
Titans was/is a very good show – that probably needed more budget
.
But Doom Patrol was/is over-the-top great entertainment that I looked forward to every week :(
Honestly with that bloodbath that Zazlov is slashing his way through I’m not surprised. I feel like the only shows left will be the last of us and house of the dragon will maybe get a 4-5 season run. The reality crap he’s bringing from Discovery/Magnolia is vomit. I sure hope creative talent moves to another streamer like Paramount+ or Amazon Prime Video—now that they have MGM that could work out. In a few years Zazlov the Butcher will be regarded as single-handedly ending the Golden Age of “TV”.