Anyone who follows behind-the-scenes stories of blockbuster franchises knows that they can get quite chaotic off-camera, and that’s exactly what the showrunners of The Franchise thought would be a great premise for a series.
The show just debuted on Max recently, and now we have a behind-the-scenes look giving us a better handle at the main characters of The Franchise and what the series is really about. Check this out:
Series co-creator Sam Mendes was behind a huge franchise himself having directed some of the James Bond movies, and it’s said that some scenarios in the series were lifted straight out of anecdotes from people who had worked on Marvel or DC.
Besides the producers having to wrangle everyone in the production, there’s also cases of actors not getting along with each other and being divas on set. I thought it was hilarious that Daniel Bruhl’s character is an ‘auteur European director’ who finds himself helming a multi-million-dollar franchise film even though he only had one movie under his belt. That’s essentially what happened with Nia DaCosta with The Marvels and several other indie directors who made the big budget jump.
What’s interesting is there’s also the question of whether these big franchise films are either saving or destroying cinema as an art form. The theme isn’t really deeply explored in the first episode, but it looks like it’s going to be a recurring question throughout the season.
I think Himesh Patel’s character put it best in the pilot; he’s suffering through all of this chaos and headache because he’s just happy to be part of ‘show business’. It essentially sums up the central message that the series could be going for.
Catch new episodes of The Franchise on Max every Sunday night.
