Welcome to the Multiverse: Studios Take a Look at Fan Demand



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Marvel can be a trailblazer as studios increasingly keep in mind streaming offshoots, expansions, or companion series to big budget theatrical films during the green light process to respond to big fandoms that might. generate streaming subscriptions. Every time the studio sends a streaming series to Disney +, its parent forgoes box office revenue to fuel its streaming service. But Feige sees the potential to use the service to create his films, and vice versa, as the characters will weave between the two. For example, the studio initially made a deal with Jeremy Renner to play his Avengers character Hawkeye in a solo movie before pivoting the project to a Disney + series slated for this year.

WarnerMedia, aiming to bolster its HBO Max service, has made big splash in this vein, supporting Zack Snyder’s cut of more than $ 70 million Justice League, arguably the result of persistent fan calls to revamp the criticized 2017 film. The studio is also teasing the concept of a multiverse (think: alternate timelines existing in the same plot) to create narrative cohesion for dozens of DC projects. To that end, after 30 years, Michael Keaton will be back as Batman in Warner Bros. ‘ Flash movie, slated for 2022. DC is also looking at big budget HBO Max series, such as James Gunn’s Suicide Squad spin off Peacemaker, which began filming January 15 in Toronto, as well as a spin-off by Robert Pattinson The batman theatrical function.

This approach carries the risk that supply outweighs demand. It’s a lesson learned the hard way by the comic book industry, which went from boom to bust in the 1990s as major publishers planned seemingly endless launches and spinoffs of popular properties, but not entirely. unknown to the studios; Paramount took Star Trek from a blockbuster film and television franchise in the late ’80s and early’ 90s to a franchise seen as creatively exhausted, thanks to overexposure and more storytelling. besides generic, by all fans except the most devoted. “Narrative logic is important to people. They want to be surprised, and they want it to make sense, ”says Michael Niederman, television professor at Columbia College Chicago who studies fan culture.

The blueprint for nested streaming series can be foreshadowed by an experiment on linear television. Since 2014, The CW has held annual crossovers between its DC superhero properties, culminating in 2019 Crisis on Infinite Earths – an adaptation of a DC Comics storyline bringing together shows such as Super girl, Batwoman, Flash, The arrow and Legends of tomorrow which also featured cameos from other DC series and movies, including Ezra Miller’s Big Screen Flash. “We started with the sunflower from ‘Do we think that’s cool? But inevitably, phrases like ‘Fans are going to love this’ and’ People are going to go crazy ‘creep into our discussions,’ says writer and producer Marc Guggenheim. “I think the Venn diagram between what we wanted and what the fans wanted is practically a circle.”

It’s a tactic Sony Pictures is taking inspiration from as it expands its Marvel movie stable with Jared Leto Morbius. The feature film, dated January 21, 2022, will be the first of the films to directly reference Spider-Man and will star Keaton, reprising his role as Vulture from 2017. Spider-Man: Homecoming, suggesting for the first time that the Tom Holland films of Sony and Marvel can connect with the universe of films that Sony is building. It does appear that there is indeed a big plan for the Sony Pictures universe of Marvel characters, the name the studio has given to its burgeoning universe.

Sony has been listening to fan reactions for its Marvel spinoff. After a deaf reaction to the first trailer of 2018 Venom, the studio’s marketing group, which monitors fan chatter on social media and makes recommendations from script development through to the marketing phase, suggested rhythms fans want for the upcoming trailer: humor pissed off and Venom biting someone’s head. The film went on to outperform with $ 856 million worldwide.

And the Marvel Studios multiverse is growing under the name Jamie Foxx, who played villainous Spidey Electro in 2014. The Incredible Spider-Man 2, returns for Holland’s next feature film, much like Alfred Molina, who played the role of the villainous Doctor Octopus in Sam Raimi’s Spider-man 2 in 2004.

Meanwhile, for Universal’s Jurassic World: Dominion, the sequel to his $ 1.3 billion film in 2018 Fallen kingdom, the studio went back to its roots playing Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, all original stars of the Jurassic franchise.

As fans clapped, director Colin Trevorrow notes that it’s not enough just to put these characters together on screen. “There’s the reason we’re all excited, but the minute we’re done, we’re going to ask the deeper question, which is why?” says Trevorrow, who has the second season of Netflix Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous January 22. “What are they going to do to make it absolutely vital that they are part of this movie?”

At this point, Stan Lee’s protégé Roy Thomas has often told a story relaying a perhaps apocryphal quote from the Marvel Comics mastermind: No matter what he says, the audience doesn’t really want a change. Instead, Lee explained, they want “the illusion of change.” Studios will follow that line more and more carefully this year. Guggenheim says, “I always write with the fans in mind, of course, but they don’t dictate the creative direction of what I do.

This story first appeared in the January 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.



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