‘The Franchise’s Stars Reveal How Much of the Marvel Movie Satire is True to Life: “It’s So Soul Destroying” 

HBO‘s new satire series The Franchise takes viewers behind-the-scenes of a fictional superhero movie to reveal the depressing chaos shadowing the productions of our favorite box office hits. The set of Techto: Eye of the Storm is beleaguered by ego-centric actors, precious directors, demanding studio brass, and utterly exhausted crew. As the first season of The Franchise wears on, we’ll see production shakeups, killed cameos, toxic fandoms, messy set hookups, and whole films shelved out of nowhere.

The Franchise is a biting look at what the major superhero franchises of today have morphed into, soulless operations determined to crush the spirits of the unknown artists giving their all to bring a tentpole feature to life on an unrealistic schedule.

“I remember reading a VFX person saying that when they list those production babies in the credits at the end of a movie, you would think, ‘That’s really sweet,'” The Franchise creator and executive producer Jon Brown told Decider. “And VFX people watch that and they’re like, ‘Those are like twelve babies that grow up without a parent around because they were working all the hours so that people could go to the movies and be like, “That looks really shit. When that building falls down, I don’t buy it. It’s terrible.“‘”

“It’s like, ‘What thanks do you get for all of that work?'”

So much of The Franchise, which is also executive produced by Veep‘s Armando Iannucci, uses twisted humor to show viewers the absurd lengths people go to bring their favorite (or least favorite) superhero flicks to life. But how much of it is inspired by the reality of making superhero shows and movies? And how much of it was potentially exaggerated for the HBO’s show’s comic rhythm?

Aya Cash plays Anita, an ambitious producer who finds herself shunted onto Techto when its original producer is axed. Superhero fans also know Cash as Stormfront on Prime Video’s The Boys. When Decider asked her if any part of The Franchise resonated with her in particular she had two specific answers.

“I mean, mostly the the super suits, just because it’s so nice to not be in one,” Cash said. “I mean, they are these complicated works of art that cost more than your house and you want to take good care of them, but they’re also complicated to wear because it’s unnatural. So I related to that.”

Cash was also struck by a scene in The Franchise Episode 3 when Quinn (Katherine Waterston), Techto’s leading lady, is discovered balancing herself backwards in a chair to cry in a way that won’t make her Lilac Ghost makeup run. “I have definitely tried to sleep standing up to protect my hair,” she said.

Daniel Brühl plays Eric, Techto‘s cerebral director, in The Franchise, but Marvel fans might know him as Captain America: Civil War and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier villain Baron Zemo. Decider didn’t even have to bring up this connection because Brühl brought it up himself.

“I was never thinking of the Marvel flicks that I that I had done because that was a very well-oiled machine. I was treated with a lot of respect and kindness,” Brühl said. “Everybody was asking me if that was the reference. No, but there was another film that I did that I would rather not mention.”

Although Brühl didn’t reveal the production, he was quick to call it “a total shit show” that “went downhill that drastically.”

“There was a lot of suffering and frustration and still you have to wake up in the morning and you have to survive that thing. You know, it’s so soul destroying and sad,” Brühl said. “And so, yeah, I was thinking of that.”

While Darren Goldstein’s toy company exec Pat represents the thoughts and (lack of) feelings of the studio brass in The Franchise, the entire operation is actually controlled by a single character — Shane — whom we never meet or see onscreen. Instead, omnipresent assistant Bryson (Isaac Powell) serves as Shane’s avatar.

So is Shane supposed to be a stand-in for Kevin Feige? Was there an actor secretly reading his lines for Powell on set?

“In my mind, Shane, he is like also wearing a baseball cap, but with, like, a shadow over his face,” Powell said. “So in my imagination, he is kind of faceless. He’s just this sort of specter to me.”

Instead of focusing on the top of the production heap, The Franchise gives a voice to the legions of crew we might not realize is responsible for big budget blockbusters. The Franchise’s cast was emphatic that the show accurately captures all of these smaller relationships, be it the strange rivalries that pop up between departments, or in the case of director Eric and script supervisor Steph (Jessica Hynes), an intense codependency.

“I do care. I mean, yeah, it is Stephanie job to make sure his film gets made,” Hynes said. “I mean, that’s her reason for being, in this situation, to help Eric make his movie the way he wants to make it, too.”

“And on sets, directors and script continuity, they do have that very close relationship,” Brühl said.

“Co-dependent,” Hynes said.

On sets, the unsung hero of the whole production is often the first assistant director. Himesh Patel stars as Techto‘s first AD Daniel in The Franchise and he told Decider that playing Dan not only gave him “a whole new appreciation of the job of a first AD,” but he thinks The Franchise actually undersells Daniel.

“Especially in this sort of scenario where they’re working on a franchise movie for a big, huge production…He is the go between of the creative endeavor that’s happening and the studio that’s bearing down on what’s going on,” Patel said.

“And if anything, you know, he is the line,” he said, referencing Pat’s cruel Episode 1 speech cutting Dan’s status down. “He’s actually the line.”

Not Pat, not Shane, not the shareholders…The Franchise argues that the glue holding cinema together is the first AD.

In an ironic turn of events, one of the things The Franchise gets hilariously right is the aforementioned crunch on the VFX industry. In some of the screeners Decider received, VFX on key Franchise sequences was still forthcoming.

“Actually, yeah, I need to laugh. I’ve just been sent some back VFX to look at immediately after this,” Brown said. “Luckily our VFX team are very well looked after, but they do recognize within this, that it is really true, that that is something that really does happen.”

“These effects house is incredibly overworked and underpaid and it’s sometimes not unionized and it’s really tough. That was just one of many experiences that we wanted to be able to show.”

The VFX crunch, the shelving of whole films, steroid-induced bacne, death threats, and sheer exhaustion…these are the many, many wild realities of modern franchise filmmaking you’ll get to see HBO’s The Franchise.