By Kayla DeKraker
The classic LOONEY TUNES franchise, known for beloved characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, is making a comeback but not necessarily with the studio that created it.
Warner Bros. removed the cartoons from its streaming service, HBO Max, in 2025, but LOONEY TUNES since found fans again through Fox’s Tubi, a free, ad-supported streaming service. In October, it even made it onto the platform’s top 10 list.
“There are a ton of viewers and fans who come to Tubi and engage with LOONEY TUNES for a multitude of reasons, and I think our job is to make that nostalgia accessible, to make those cartoons accessible to the broadest possible audience,” explained Sam Harowitz, Tubi’s head of acquisitions.
He knew LOONEY TUNES would be a big draw, so he snagged the content when he realized it was no longer accessible to fans.
“When we noticed that LOONEY TUNES was no longer available, we actually reached out to Warner Bros. over the summer,” Harowitz explained. “We had some of the more recent shows, like THE LOONEY TUNES SHOW, so we reached out about MERRIE MELODIES because we felt like we had the right directional signals.”
Related: LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION
Love for Bugs Bunny and friends doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
“According to Parrot Analytics, the franchise has generated more than $300 million in global subscriber revenue from the first quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2025, with $250 million of this coming from HBO Max,” TheWrap reported, “raising the question of why it left WBD’s streaming service in the first place.”
WB did, however, have a reason, and a representative confirmed with Deadline last year that they removed the classic shorts to focus HBO Max on family and adult content as children’s programming didn’t perform well on the platform.
WB still owns the franchise, though, and promises LOONEY TUNES has a bright future there.
“I’ve been around some 15 years at the studio, and the Tunes have always been core,” a spokesperson said of the franchise’s future at WB. “It’s part of the legacy and part of the current…It’s going to be a big part of the future.”
TheWrap reported that the studio has “a new animated theatrical feature set to release in the coming years” that’s LOONEY TUNES-related.
Regardless of what’s ahead at WB, Tubi’s is glad to have the animated shorts in their library.
“On its own, LOONEY TUNES is a huge win for us,” Harowitz told Vulture. He believes that Tubi’s FAST, or free and ad-supported television, contributes to its success.
“In my mind, AVOD [ad-supported video on demand] and FAST [free ad-supported streaming TV] is ad-supported TV in a different candy wrapper. I get to experience it through the eyes of my kids but also evoke the same emotional response I remember as an 8-year-old sitting in front of a CRT Toshiba TV,” he said.
We can’t wait to see what’s next for LOONEY TUNES!
Read Next: That’s Not All, Folks! LOONEY TUNES Finds New Home
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