Amid its highly publicized merger with Discovery Inc., the content divisions at Warner Bros. have been in a rather volatile state. With several divisions of one of the biggest companies in entertainment facing restructurings and an unceremonious removal of some content from HBO Max, some fans have expressed confusion regarding the future of Warner Bros. Discovery’s channels, including [adult swim] and its iconic weekend anime block, Toonami. Despite the constantly-evolving situations at WBD, the company has confirmed that it has no plans to change the block.
After getting in contact with GameRant, representatives at WBD have confirmed that there are no plans or any desire to axe the block within the company. Likewise, the company has confirmed that the block is still looking forward to continuing its slate of original anime projects, starting in early October with its horror anime miniseries, Housing Complex C. [adult swim]’s original Toonami projects represent an overall shift in the company to combine its existing practice of dubbing acquired anime (mostly shonen) with a slate of more exclusively-broadcast anime and anime-adjacent content.
This includes past series such as Production I.G.’s Fena: Pirate Princess and the CGI Blade Runner spinoff, Black Lotus, as well as upcoming projects including the long-anticipated animated adaptation of Junji Ito’s horror manga Uzumaki and an anime spinoff of [adult swim]’s flagship sitcom, Rick and Morty. This slate of original content in addition to its regularly licensed lineup are clear indicators that WBD still very much believes in the Toonami block.
Still, for fans, the official confirmation is nice to know during what seems like a very fluid, frankly uncertain time at the newly-merged media giant. After being spun-off from its former parent company AT&T and into a new deal with Discovery (a brand known primarily for unscripted reality TV) under the heading of David Zaslav, WBD has been restructuring and refocusing certain aspects of the company, the types of content it puts out, and where that content ends up.
Most notably, this has already resulted in the cancelation of the mostly-complete live-action Batgirl film and several in-development animated projects for HBO Max, which was recently announced to be soon merging services with Discovery’s previous platform Discovery+. These cancelations, combined with the indefinite removal of already completed animated content from HBO Max, have led to considerable apprehension from both creators and fans.
The long-term outcomes of how the company will navigate this belt-tightening are as of right now unknown. Nevertheless, the confirmation that Toonami is all-clear is sure to mean a lot for fans of the block which has allowed generations of fans to fall in love with anime.