HBO Max Cancels Another Upcoming DC Comics Project

HBO Max may be the streaming home of DC Comics movies and shows, but the future of those movies and shows is looking awfully murky right now. Last week, the service shocked Hollywood by canceling a big Batgirl movie that had already been shot and even screened for test audiences once or twice. Now it seems they have quietly shut down work on another DC project, this one a series based on the long-running DC science-fiction series Strange Adventures.

The project was first announced in October of 2019, when HBO Max first announced a wave of DC Comics shows. The headliner at that time was a big TV adaptation of Green Lantern that still hasn’t happened. For the moment, that project seems to still be on. But Strange Adventures, which was billed as anthology series at that time, is now off.

That’s according to Kevin Smith, who was supposed to work on the series as a director and writer. He said on one of his podcasts that the show is now dead. He, for one, wasn’t shocked by the decision, saying shutting down the project “kind of made sense to me — nobody necessarily knows these characters, and it sounded like an expensive show.” (The show’s cancelation was then confirmed by Deadline.)

Obscure and expensive seems like the kiss of death for DC projects at Warners right now — the stated reason for Batgirl going away was the company believed the $90 million movie was not worth the expense. They ultimately decided to use the project as a tax write-off rather than put it on streaming or pump even more money into it in order to make it a viable theatrical release.

The Strange Adventures comic had various lead characters through the years. In its early days it was home to Captain Comet. Later, it was the launching pad for quirky DC heroes like the Atomic Knights and Animal Man. In recent years, the title has been most commonly associated with the sci-fi hero Adam Strange, a human who get zapped to a faraway planet and becomes its savior. Smith says his version would have featured Bizarro and Jimmy Olsen.