Posted in: HBO, Opinion, TV, TV | Tagged: opinion, The Franchise

The Franchise: HBO's Hollywood Satire Gets Way Too Much Wrong

The Franchise is a baffling attempt at Hollywood satire that gets so many details about studio filmmaking wrong, so the humor rings hollow.

"Hollywood and superhero movies suck," and The Franchise is here to tell you that again and again, week after week. The series is about a big superhero movie shoot in trouble as a put-upon 1st Assistant Director (Hamish Patel) tries to do his best to make sure the film gets completed. This could have been a fun and stinging satire if it didn't get so much wrong about how movies are made. It feels like the writers have never worked on a film set in their lives. The series is full of surprisingly inaccurate, unauthentic details that make up much of the plot and end up destroying any credibility the story has.

Given how crazy the film industry can get in real life, you'd think The Franchise might have practically written itself. All the stereotypes of Hollywood satire are here: the egotistical and insecure actors, the ass-kissing assistants, the self-important but depressed director, the asshole philistine studio executive who lords it over the production, and the put-upon hero of the story who's the only sane one on set trying to keep things going, which in this case is Patel's 1st A.D. If you switch off the sound and just look at the series, it appears to be an accurate portrayal of a hectic movie set.

What "The Franchise" Gets Wrong

The biggest inaccuracy of the series is that there isn't a working screenwriter on set to make any changes that are needed on the fly. Why would the director be making up new lore names when it's supposed to be from the comics franchise that the studio would insist on getting right and a screenwriter should have written in the script? Why would the producer and director be asking everyone except a screenwriter on set for story changes? That's completely ridiculous.

The director and producer would never, ever ask crew members for ideas on how to change the script or story ideas. The job definitions and hierarchy on a set are strictly followed and demanded by the unions. A 1st Assistant Director would never talk about comic book lore or continuity; that's the on-set screenwriter's job. If a lowly assistant were to step out of her lane to contribute story ideas in a bid to get a leg up in the industry, she or he would be fired, thrown off the set, and blacklisted from the industry. No matter how miserable that set could get, the screenwriter is being paid a huge amount of money to be there every day as part of union contract stipulations. Yet there's not one single screenwriter on that set in The Franchise?

A-List Cameos Not Made Up on the Fly

No production would improvise or negotiate an A-list actor cameo in the middle of production. Schedules are too tight. That is always decided months or weeks in advance and set in stone. Or, if swapped out, the on-set screenwriter would write the new lines and scene.

A Studio Wouldn't Shoot Two Blockbuster Superhero Movies at Once

Many of the problems – and comedy situations – in The Franchise arise from the budget and resources of "Tecto" being drained to support a more A-list superhero film being shot at the same time. Two superhero movies from the same studio are not shot at the same time these days because those massive budgets and resources can only be allocated to one blockbuster movie at a time. One after the other? Yes – but at the same time? Again, the series shoots and misses on this one.

Product Placement is Only for Lifestyle Products

The production is suddenly ordered to include product placement promoting Chinese farming equipment. Yes, that's an absurd idea to make a joke out of but it doesn't ring true. No Hollywood production is going to do production placement on any China product, not even when The Franchise began filming. The US and Hollywood's relationship with China was already on the outs by the time The Franchise began production over a year ago. This shows a serious misunderstanding by the writers for what kinds of items get product placement in a high-profile film – it's usually cars, watches, smartphones and luxury consumer lifestyle items for the aspiration. Many upmarket brands and products bid millions to be promoted in the next James Bond films, for example.  There is nothing aspirational about farming equipment from China or any country.

Why Did The Writers Get So Much Wrong?

Fiction works best when it feels authentic or has some basis in reality. It doesn't have to be 100% true, just enough. What's baffling about The Franchise is that the writers worked so hard to get nearly all of it wrong, like it was written by a cargo cult rather than professionals. And you don't need fake, inaccurate situations to create a satire of Hollywood when there are already countless real-life stories from movie sets to draw on to milk jokes from. That the writers just get so much wrong on an expensive series with a big budget is the biggest mystery of this series. Could that be why it's not a big talking point like, say, Veep or any number of HBO series that are considered classics that they still talk about years later?

The Franchise is on HBO.

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