Superhero fatigue isn’t going anywhere. The MCU built what is still probably the most successful shared cinematic universe ever, culminating in the two-part spectacular cinematic event of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Then Marvel squandered the goodwill and perfect endpoint with an overexpansion into TV and less cohesive storytelling on the film side.
The DCEU arguably has the more well-known characters — Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, compared to the original Avengers lineup that included Hawkeye and Black Widow. However, while the DCEU movies excelled at individual character-driven films and distinctive creative visions, it never felt like the parts were building toward a unified whole.
In the last decade, even the most ardent fans of superhero stories have to admit that more isn’t necessarily better. Prime Video’s flagship show The Boys ran for five seasons and was a smash success for satirizing society’s obsession with superheroes.
Sadly, by the The Boys‘ series finale, the show had become the very thing it was mocking: a franchise in its own right, with two spin-offs and more continuations planned. In fact, the final season of The Boys was ironically muddled by having to service past and future spin-offs.
Fortunately, HBO has a perfect antidote to anyone with superhero fatigue. The Franchise is a show with no powers but a laser-sharp satirical take on the behind-the-scenes process of making a superhero movie that’s a small cog in a larger franchise machine.
The Franchise Is A Perfect Binge For Fans Of Superhero Storytelling
The Franchise clearly comes from people who understand why audiences fell in love with superhero movies in the first place. Rather than mocking comic book stories themselves, the series targets the corporate machinery surrounding modern franchise filmmaking.
The characters in The Franchise are led by Daniel, an overworked first assistant director desperately trying to keep a troubled superhero movie on the rails. Daniel genuinely believes the movie could be good if it were allowed to exist on its own terms. Instead, every decision is filtered through studio mandates designed to support a larger cinematic universe.
Executives demand a female sidekick in The Franchise episode 3 to boost women’s interest in the movie or insist on a forced cameo of another character who happens to be filming next door. Meanwhile, the filmmakers and actors struggle to reconcile artistic ambitions with the realities of blockbuster filmmaking.
Even though The Franchise is fictional, it’s impossible not to see parallels to real-world superhero studios, especially Marvel. Anyone who has followed reports about reshoots will recognize the absurdity. The comedy works because every compromise feels believable.
Daniel cares deeply about making something worthwhile, but he watches the movie’s identity slowly erode under the weight of corporate priorities. Each small concession chips away at the project’s integrity, yet the largely unseen people making those decisions barely seem to notice.
With just eight episodes, all under half an hour, it’s a fast and enjoyable binge. Unfortunately, a satirical comedy about the business of superhero storytelling doesn’t have the instant appeal of an actual superhero series.
HBO never seemed to fully figure out how to market the show, which is a shame because it’s one of the smartest and most underrated takes on modern filmmaking in recent years. It didn’t help that The Franchise premiered in 2024, between the penultimate and final season of The Boys, a different but already popular superhero satire.
The Boys Beat The Franchise To The Punch
Part of the reason The Franchise struggled to break through is that audiences had already spent years watching another hit series dissect the superhero genre. By the time the HBO comedy premiered in 2024, The Boys had become one of television’s biggest shows and dominated the cultural conversation surrounding superhero fatigue.
On the surface, the comparison makes sense. Both series are skeptical of superhero culture, both poke fun at franchise storytelling, and both explore the corporate forces that shape modern entertainment. However, they are ultimately interested in very different targets.
The Boys is first and foremost a satire of capitalism and celebrity. The show’s central question isn’t whether superhero movies have become too large; it’s whether people with extraordinary powers would actually use them responsibly. The entertainment industry, public relations machine, and corporate branding surrounding Vought exist in service of that larger critique.
Aya Cash, who played Stormfront in The Boys and will appear in Vought Rising, as well as playing Nebula in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, plays the movie’s producer and Daniel’s ex in The Franchise. Daniel Brühl, who played Helmut Zemo in Captain America: Civil War, plays the movie’s highbrow director in The Franchise.
The Franchise is far more specific. It isn’t interested in superheroes as fantasy figures at all. Instead, it focuses on the increasingly impossible task of making a single movie matter when every creative decision must support a larger franchise.
The show’s thesis is that the film being made is never allowed to stand on its own. Every scene, character, and story beat is evaluated according to how it serves future installments, spin-offs, or crossover events. That distinction makes The Franchise one of the sharper industry satires of the streaming era, but it also made the show harder to sell.
To many casual viewers, it looked like another series commenting on the same superhero trends that The Boys had already spent years exploring. By 2024, the idea of superhero fatigue simply wasn’t a novel hook anymore, and The Franchise was canceled after one season. Nevertheless, The Franchise is a very cathartic, entertaining binge for fans of superhero movies.
- Release Date
-
2024 – 2024-00-00
- Network
-
HBO Max
- Showrunner
-
Jon Brown
