HBO on franchise fatigue: Sorry to those other guys, but we’re built different
HBO CEO Casey Bloys says the issue isn't franchise fatigue, it's "a sameness of storytelling"
Aux News HBO
“Franchise fatigue”—or more precisely superhero fatigue—is a topic at the forefront of the minds of Hollywood insiders and onlookers, particularly after yesterday’s report on the scrambling going on at Marvel to right the ship. Is it an issue of quality or quantity? Is it an issue of bloated budgets or convoluted lore? Is it even really an issue at all? Whatever the case, it is not something that HBO has to worry about, according to network CEO Casey Bloys.
HBO is of course stewarding a few franchises at the moment, including the television-based Game Of Thrones shows as well as film spin-offs for IT and Dune and the DC Universe. Nevertheless, Bloys doesn’t worry about people getting tired of his TV shows. (He worries about people criticizing them, but that’s another story.) “Remember a couple years ago everybody was kind of obsessed with, every time we would put a Game Of Thrones script into development, [saying] “oh my God, they’re doing another one, another one, another one.” And I would always say… I don’t have a plan where I go, ‘Okay, I need three Game Of Thrones on the schedule by this time.’ I’ve always said, we’re gonna do the shows that we think are good,” Bloys said at an HBO event attended by The A.V. Club. “So after the first show, we developed a ton of scripts, and House Of The Dragon came up being the one we felt most excited by. That’s kind of how we approach everything.”
The network exec pointed out that the advantage of having access to Warner Bros.’ treasure trove of intellectual property is that “the people who like DC may or may not like IT: Welcome To Derry, may or may not like Dune, may or may not like…we’re developing a Crazy Rich Asians series, or The Conjuring. So, I think tentpole fatigue comes from when you’re telling the same story over and over within the same universe.”
And yes, this is a direct call-out to WB’s competitor: “I think unfortunately Marvel, as good as their shows are, there’s probably been a lot of them. And I think that’s one of the advantages that we’ve got at Warner Bros. is it’s not just one set of stories, there’s a lot of things you can go to.”
One would think this is also an advantage for Disney, which owns Marvel the way WB owns DC. Disney, quite famously, has a lot of IP to play with. But even Disney CEO Bob Iger agreed there were too many Marvel series, admitting over the summer the deluge of small-screen output “diluted focus and attention” for the brand.
Asked about DC’s stable of superheroes and the audience’s apparent waning interest in the genre, Bloys said “I think the key even within DC is trying to tell different stories, different styles and not do the same type of show over and over and over again. I would say, Peacemaker is a very different show tonally than Penguin. So, there’s not a uniformity to storytelling and I think that helps.” Then one more subtle dig at Marvel: “I don’t know that it’s necessarily tentpole fatigue as much as it is a sameness of storytelling.” Heyo!
That’s big talk for a studio that has struggled to launch its own interconnected cinematic superhero universe, but Bloys is the TV guy, so DC’s repeated failures in theaters is literally not his department. He can only speak to HBO and Max Originals, and “if you let quality be your guide… that’s a pretty good way to balance it,” in his opinion. “I think not starting with a preset, ‘We need five tentpoles’… any sort of prescribed amount to fill, and just focusing on quality is a good way to do it.”
19 Comments
It’s still crazy to me that they’ve already planned out television shows for their new DC universe before they’ve even started filming their first movie. See if people actually like the new universe this time before you keep adding more to it.
I mean you have to have a long term plan when you’re running a major corporation. I work for a large automaker and because of my role I’m familiar with our future product plans. We have plans for second generations of vehicles coming out in the 2030s where the first generation hasn’t even the market yet and have no idea how successful they will actually be. That’s just how it goes in any business.
That’s why he doesn’t worry about franchise fatigue. All their franchises flame out long before anybody can get tired of them.
I’d like to hear from definitelynotcaseybloysburner23.
…yes, that will do.
Tonal risks could definitely make DC more competitive if they let the directors mold the work around themselves, rather than the other way around. That’s not a risk many execs like to take. But if WB really wants to harness IP, it’s time to finally get serious about that gritty ALF reboot, “I Kill Me.”
Make more DC animated films and shove your spinoffs up your ass.
HBO makes a ton of quality stuff, as always. But your corporation is trying its hardest to fuck the brand into the dirt buddy.
This guy can say whatever he wants as long as they keep making Harley Quinn.
DO YOU REALLY WANNADO YOU REALLY WANNA TASTE ITGET IT ON, GET IT ON TOPMAKE A MOVE EXTREMEMAKE A POSEMAKE A SHORTCUT TO YOUR DREAMSFLOAT STRAIGHT TO THE STARS ON THAT FLYING THINGNever have I rewatched a credits sequence over and over again like this one.
It’s like an infromercial that you can’t. stop.
“CEO Says His Company Is Better Than Competitor”Why shouldn’t we believe him? What does he have to gain?
Probably helps that they take so damn long to produce content that it usually feels pretty fresh.
HBO on franchise fatigue: Remember Late Night Wars?
Bring back Winning Time, you cheap bastards.
I mean, “franchise fatigue” as a general phenomenon is nonsense. While I feel like I’m done with Star Wars, I will watch any Planet of the Apes movie or TV show anybody wants to make. I’m in the mood for more of the John Wick universe, but none of the Harry Potter universe. I’d love another Mass Effect, I don’t care if there’s another Halo. Everybody’s got all these “Boo/Yay” reactions to various franchises that have more to do with the individual than they do the text.
I mean, not that I won’t probably watch most if not all of those shows, but the thing that I’ve always admired HBO Original Programming for was actual original storytelling. Giving creative people a chance to tell the kinds of stories that they want to tell and letting them tell them the way that they want, without restrictions or mandates. They basically invented prestige tv, ffs. There was a long period of time where I automatically expected any new HBO show to be something total original and likely amazing. That should be the goal. And none of that stuff was an exercise in franchise exploitation. But I guess we’ll see.
I watched House of Dragons. (all of it) I wasn’t a huge Game of Thrones fan, but I got through that too. House of Dragons was not bad at all. It was: – Slower in a good way
– Way less confusing
– Less reliant on magic – I’m sure there’s a 4th good point
However, it DID suffer from the same “actors that look like they should be in this world” issue that the Hobbit movies had. But it was truly different from Game of Thrones and I’ll watch the next season. Everyone shat on Scorcese, but I think there is a certain population of people (parents) who have the right to criticize Marvel more than any other. If you had kids around 20o8-2010, you were forced to watch every fucking Marvel movie. And yeah… lots of them are the same. For fans of Kumail Nanjiani that didn’t know what the fuck an Eternal is, that movie was just a lazy turkey.