Marvel Studios may seem like a well-oiled machine to some, but anyone who does their research knows that not all is fine and dandy with these big blockbuster studios. There could be just as much drama offscreen as what’s shown onscreen, and that’s the basic premise of The Franchise by HBO.
The series is set to tell the story of a production crew for a fictional successful box office IP, and the movie is said to be drawing from real-life stories surrounding the making of franchises like Marvel and DC. The Franchise is set to come out this October, and we have a new trailer to get fans more excited about this meta-narrative. Check it:
The series comes from Succession creator Jon Brown with co-creators Sam Mendes (1917) and Armando Iannuci (The Death of Stalin). Mendes had his own experience with franchises when he worked on the Daniel Craig James Bond movies, and word probably just goes around about how chaotic these big blockbuster movies get.
Talking to THR, Brown shared:
“People think these movies are laid out in neat phases for the next 10 years. Then you hear about a set where, in the morning, a limo literally pulls up, the window comes down, and they hand out new script pages. Or producers on set have eight versions of the same script open, and they go through each script, cherry picking lines, and then they Frankenstein a scene out of nothing. Or the studio sends an actor to the set in the morning and they basically rewrite the day’s entire scene [to accommodate the last-minute cast addition]. You would assume all this was decided two years ago, but it’s happened a lot across Marvel and DC movies.”
As far as some chaotic stories go, some say that studios would go so far as to have one director shoot a scene they already know will be scrapped while the scene that’s going to replace it is being worked on simultaneously.
A lot of fans also know about the whole drama with Zack Snyder and Justice League where he had to exit the project and Joss Whedon had to take over—much to the dismay of everyone else on the cast. Don’t even get me started on David Ayer and what WB did to him with Suicide Squad.
We don’t know how long they plan to run with The Franchise, but I’m already in love with the premise and am hoping to get a Silicon Valley-level of commentary on the comic book movie industry.
Watch out for The Franchise when it releases on Max this Oct. 6.
